The Princes of Woldshire and the Dark Wizard
by Quaffle and Snitch
Summary: Harry, Ron and Hermione are transported into a medieval tale and have problems with dark wizards, horses and each other. Adventure, romance and a touch of humour by Fred and George. Will our friends save the day or need saving themselves? Also in French.
1. Entering the Unknown

_**Author's note: **Yes, this time there is only one author. Quaffle doesn't have much time on her hands now she's gone to universtiy, so I, Snitch, decided to start my own fanfic. It will be different from the other story (Hermione Granger and the Pureblood Prince). This time I've tried to put more action into the storyline, which required thinking about the plot a lot more. Now I have to stick to the storyline more closely, so writing this is very different, more difficult. Of course, writing on my own is different too. I do hope you enjoy this story as much as you enjoyed the other one. As always, reviews are very much appreciated._

_Of course, J.K. Rowling is to be thanked for creating the beautiful surroundings in which this story takes place and its characters, all of it belongs to her._

**- Chapter one -  
**

**Entering the Unknown**

Grey clouds stretched across the sky. Though it was summer, they only gave away a few patches of blue, through which pale beams of sunshine squeaked. The light of these glittered on the wet, vibrant green grass and brought the first warmth of the day to a strange building: the house of the Weasleys. The rooms of the Burrow seemed to have been put together by a giant toddler trying to build an impressive castle with a box of building blocks, but the blocks looked like they were already falling down; yet they were held together by some unseen force. This force filled all of the house, from Molly Weasley in the kitchen, who was cleaning up breakfast with the swaying of her wand, up to the ghoul who was throwing around furniture in the attic.

"Why can't that stupid creature be quiet for once!" exclaimed Ron. He was laying on his garish orange bed and folded his pillow over his head to stop the noise of cracking wood from getting into his ears. The pillow was orange too, as almost everything in the room, and covered with two large C's, which stood for Ron's favourite Quidditch team: the Chudley Cannons. The intense colour covering every inch of every wall and surface had at first made Harry's eyes ache, but now that he had been sleeping in this room for over a week he had gotten used to it. As he had to the almost constant crashes and bumps in the attic above Ron's bedroom. In fact, he had gotten used to being at the Burrow in general and all the magical things inside it now seemed about just as exciting as Aunt Petunia's dishwasher. To be honest, he was actually quite bored.

Harry picked up the small ball he had taken with him from home and resumed throwing it against the wall against which Ron's bed stood. At first the players of the Chudley Cannons on the poster on that wall had been offended by getting a ball thrown at them and had loudly protested, but now they had decided that ignoring Harry would be best and left Harry even more bored. Harry tried to aim the ball exactly at the Seeker at the far right of the picture, but as the ball hit him right on the nose, he hardly even blinked. Ron, however, did, when the ball bounced back to Harry via his back.

"That's really annoying, that ball, you know that?" Ron said as he sat up and rubbed the spot where the ball had hit him. "Is that the Muggle idea of a fun game, throwing a small ball with no will of its own against a wall?" he asked, sounding sarcastic.

"Well, actually there is game like that," Harry answered, cheering up slightly and stopping throwing the ball. He was quite feeling like playing some other game than Quidditch for a change. "It's called squash. Only you'd need rackets for that, I haven't got those," he added, trying to think of a solution for that.

"Rackets? Oh wait, they're those really huge things Muggles use to go into space, right?"

"No," Harry sighed. "Those are called _rockets_. Rackets are things with which you can hit the ball. Like Beater bats, only different. Hey, maybe your father has got some rackets lying around? You know, along with all the other Muggle stuff he collects?"

"Yeah, maybe," Ron said, not sounding very interested and trying to straighten the poster where Harry's ball had creased it.

"Ah, come on. Let's go and look for them in your father's garage. There's nothing else to do anyway," Harry said and he got up and left the room. Sighing, Ron made a last smoothing movement over the poster and then got off the bed to follow him.

Harry had already stamped down half the stairs and was knocking on the bathroom door:

"Oi! Hermione!" he said and the sound of clattering water made by the shower stopped for a moment. "We're going to the garage for a sec, okay?"

"What are you going to-" said Hermione's muffled voice through the wooden door, but Harry had already continued going down the stairs. Ron shrugged and joined Harry downstairs at the backdoor. When Harry pushed the door open, the fresh green smell of wet grass greeted them as a gust of chilly wind brushed against their faces. Ron shivered and reluctantly closed the door again when they had stepped outside.

After having crossed the garden with big steps, Harry fumbled at the door of the garage, but it wouldn't open. "It's locked… Won't your father let you in anymore after we used the car in our second year?" Harry asked.

"No," Ron answered, "it's mum he's worried about. He doesn't want her to see all the Muggle stuff he's keeping here. She's the one who went mad about the car. It's all right, I'll just open it. _Alohomora_," he muttered and the door sprang open with a click. It revealed a space totally filled up with objects. The room was a warm brown with a dusty red carpet and the walls were lined with boxes of different sizes and all kinds of electronics lay spread across the floor. In the middle of the room, there stood a big wooden table with a Muggle toolbox on it, with several screwdrivers and an radio dissembled in many pieces next to it. The antenna was twitching and threw a screw of the table.

"Wow," Harry said, "your dad's got quite a collection here…" He walked towards the table and picked up the screw to put it back on its place, wondering at all the Muggle objects on the floor. Ron's dad had collected an extraordinary amount of plugs…

"Yeah. I haven't been here for a long time you know. I'd forgotten how much stuff's here," Ron said as his eyes slid past the boxes. "We could actually have a lot of fun with all of this!" he said cheerfully and took an old-looking big brown case out of one of the piles. Greedily, he opened it and looked at its contents with interest.

"What's this supposed to be?" Ron grinned, lifting a fan from the case and propelling it with his other hand. Harry laughed, and Ron got out other items, his grin turning into progressively louder laughing as he encountered a handful of pens, a calculating machine, a box of matches and a flashlight, with which he flickered light wildly across the garage when he had discovered the on-off switch. It was hilarious for Harry to watch Ron study and try out the objects as though they had just fallen down from Mars and Harry rummaged through the case to find even funnier objects. As he pushed aside a remote control, stapler and hairspray, he saw a large book. He took it out from under the other stuff and laid it on his lap. On the cover, two proud looking men stood before a castle, a dark-haired woman behind them with her hand on the shoulder of the right man. The armour of the men was printed in shining silver and the elaborate dress of the woman in gold. The dark castle behind them loomed over them ominously in black ink. With the remote control, Harry poked Ron, who was laughing frantically while he pushed the buttons of the calculator with five fingers at a time.

"Hey Ron, look at this book here," Harry said, shoving the book under Ron's nose. Ron looked up from the calculating machine and tried to swallow his laughter, only succeeding half in doing it, and fell back into an uncontrollable fit of laughter as he read the title.

"The Princes of the House of Woldshire and the_ Dark Wizard_! The Dark wizard!" Ron hiccupped, "ooh, scary wizards threatening noble Muggles!" Together Harry and Ron rolled over the red carpet, roaring so hard they didn't hear the door of the garage open.

"And just what are you two doing?" Hermione stood in the door opening looking at the two boys on the floor. An amused smile played across the corners of her mouth.

Flustered, both of them got up. "Here Hermione, take a look at this," Ron said, holding out the book with a big smile.

Hermione reached out to take it, but then recoiled her hand. She looked at the book with distrusting interest. "Isn't this Arthur's bewitched Muggle stuff? Don't you think it's better to keep off it-"

"Really, it's fine," Ron interrupted her, "it's not like he keeps dangerous stuff in here. Nothing really dangerous anyway," Ron sniggered and laid his hand on the cover. "Look, this is a story made by scared Muggles." He looked at her, hoping to see her smile, and then opened the book. A waft of the smell of very old paper filled their nostrils. On the first page of the book, an illustration of a large, ancient looking door greeted them. Beneath it, graceful writing read: _Enter into this magical world_. Ron managed to chuckle at this text once, before all three of them had a strange sensation after reading this: the book left Ron's hands and stood up in front of them. All of their sight was filled with yellowish paper as the book grew and grew until it reached up to the ceiling. The ancient door drawn in ink was now as big as any normal door and it opened to reveal a pitch-black darkness. The smiles vanished from their faces and they froze, their eyes growing wide. Then the book closed and its cover slammed against their backs. They tripped over the doorstep, and fell into a pit of blackness.


	2. A Royal Welcome?

**_Author's note: So our friends seem to have gotten themselves in trouble in chapter one, but exactly what kind of trouble? And will they be able to get out of it?_  
**

**- Chapter two - **

Out of nothingness, suddenly there was a floor. Hard, cold rock greeted Harry, Ron and Hermione as they fell down upon it.

"Ron? Hermione?" Harry wanted to call out as he scrambled up, but when he saw where he was, things did not look quite as bad as he had expected them to be and he closed his half-opened mouth. He seemed to have landed in a large room inside a castle. The room was hewn from grey stone and had a ceiling which was lost in darkness. The only light came from a large crackling fire, ablaze in the fireplace. It illuminated a long table and the people who were sitting on the chairs adjacent to it. They were in the middle of a royal meal, but were frozen: holding a knife in mid-air, a glass of wine touching their lips or their mouth opened to welcome a bite of meat which didn't move. Harry turned his head to see whether Ron and Hermione were frozen as well, but he found them looking around the three-dimensional photograph in which they had landed as well.

"Where _are_ we?" Harry asked. Disoriented, Hermione and Ron looked at him.

"Some sort of castle, it seems…" Hermione said uncertainly. "I can't see how old it is. Medieval, at any rate, but exactly how old…" She studied the patterns on the brightly coloured carpet on the floor, but shook her head as she couldn't make out from which time it came. Then she looked up again. "It must be an imaginary age. I think…" she bit her lip, "we must be inside the book." For a moment, no one spoke. In a worried silence, they looked at each other. A concerned frown was on Harry's forehead. Then at once it disappeared.

"We got in. We can get out," he said simply. He walked to the enormous wooden door opposite to the table and grabbed the rusted door handle. As he pushed, it didn't resist and Harry heard a click as the locking mechanism opened. Happily surprised with how easy this went, he smiled over his shoulder to Ron en Hermione, who stood behind him. Ron stepped forward and helped Harry to drag the heavy door open. Creaking heavily it scraped over the floor and revealed what lay behind it. At this, Hermione squeaked and stepped backwards with a start. "Ron! Harry! There's nothing there!"

Harry and Ron got to the opening of the door and gasped as they looked into a void. It wasn't black as the entrance into the book had been, or yellow as its pages. There was just nothing at all: no bottom beneath them, no ceiling above. The doorstep ended in a paper thin edge.

"The end of the page," Harry said. "Well, that should be easy." He got that scary look in his eyes he always had when he was about to do something very brave or foolish (you didn't know which until after he had finished doing it). He pulled up his sleeves and made a step in the direction of the doorstep, but at the same time Ron and Hermione lunged out and grabbed him and they all fell down upon the floor. "Ouch!" yelled Harry, and shot an incensing look at both of them.

"We are _not_ jumping off the edge!" Hermione said sternly.

"But obviously that's how we can get-" Harry started, but Hermione interrupted him.

"We don't know that! There's nothing, there's no bottom! You could be falling down forever! And it doesn't look like the darkness through which we came here, so why should it lead us back to the garage!"

"Well, maybe it doesn't, but…" Harry started, and looked into the void hesitatingly. "It's not like there's an other way out of here. We'll have to get out somehow."

"Yes, of course, but let's just not jump down into endless pits the minute we get here!" Hermione snapped.

"Yeah, I guess you're right…" Harry admitted, rather reluctantly. "We'll take a look around the place first," he said and he got up. Ron shot a silent relieved look at Hermione and after that they went after Harry. He was standing at the long table, one hand leaning on the tabletop and his other was waving in front of the eyes of a girl with long reddish golden hair who looked to be about fifteen years old. Her eyes didn't move at all, and kept staring at the chunk of bread in her slender, pale fingers, without even blinking.

"Do you think they've been frozen with a spell?" Harry wondered aloud. "Does that mean we'll freeze too?" he added nervously.

"No…" Hermione said, looking slightly scared at the eaters, imagining herself sitting with a piece of bread in her hand for eternity. "No, I don't think so. It looks like they are characters in this story. And anyway, we've got our wands." She reached inside the pockets of her robes to take hers out, but then found she didn't have any pockets at all, nor any robes. Startled she looked down on her body. Her torso was enclosed by a golden bodice, decorated with small white flowers. Below her waist it sprouted into a large skirt. Stunned she felt the smooth golden fabric with her hands.

"Ron, Harry… Will you just look at-" she started, but when she looked at them, she snorted with laughter.

"You look medieval too!" Harry and Ron looked down at their bodies as Hermione had done. There were dressed royally, in red tunics with golden accents. A leather belt was around the tunics, with a shield with a white flower on it as a buckle. Beneath it were dark tights. As she saw this, Hermione clapped her hand over her mouth and tried very hard to suppress her giggles. Ron's ears turned red when he saw what she was laughing about and even Harry got a slight flush on his cheeks.

"Right," Harry said with a catch in his voice and he cleared his throat. "Lovely." Ron was pulling his tunic down.

"Let's erm… go and continue what we were doing."

"Yes," Hermione said quickly, straightening her face. "What we were doing…" She put her gaze on the people at the table, to give the boys a moment to regain themselves. "Well… It seems like these people are very rich. Look, the woman has even got a golden ornament in her hair. Oh wait, I think it's a crown! Yes, the man at the head of table's got one too! They must be king and queen," she said. The king looked to be about fifty years old, he had lines on his face but his hair was still a warm blonde. His face had round cheeks and looked kind-hearted. His queen, who was sitting on his right, was at least fifteen years younger. She was very beautiful. Reddish brown hair framed her white face. Her cheekbones were prominent and her dark eyes were staring at the door of the room, piercing even though they were frozen.

"The king has got the same weapon on his chest as the one that's on our belt buckles," said Harry, who was standing next to the king and pointed at the large grey shield with the flower on it on the king's chest. "Guess that means we're related… We have become his sons in this story, Ron!"

"Wow, does that make us princes?" Ron asked enthusiastically, suddenly more fond of his new clothing.

"And that means I'm a princess!" Hermione said. "I dreamed of that so often when I was young!" She made a happy twirl with her golden skirt in her hand, but then stopped dead suddenly. "This does mean we're characters in the story now…" she said, grave comprehension dawning on her face.

"Then why haven't we frozen yet?" asked Ron. Non-understanding he looked around. "Why is nothing happening? Why were we put into this story if everything is motionless here except for us?"

"Why would anyone want to put us in here anyway?" Harry asked, giving Ron a questioning look.

The answer to this question, Ron did know. He heard stories about this every day at home. "Some wizards do the weirdest things to Muggle objects, just to tease the non-magical folks… It can get nasty sometimes…" he answered Harry.

"But _nothing dangerous_, right Ron!" Hermione said, sounding on the verge of getting very angry. "You said your father had no dangerous objects in that garage!" she bit at him. Ron recoiled at Hermione's sudden explosion.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know!" he tried to apologize. Hermione gave a very irritated snort and pouted. "All the stuff we used before was harmless," Ron added, trying to sound his nicest. Hermione opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again and sighed.

"Well, there's nothing we can do about that now. We're here and we'd better not fight or we'll never get out," she said, with considerable effort to keep remarks she wanted to make on the right side of her tongue.

Relieved, Ron resumed a somewhat more relaxed pose. "Maybe we have to sit in those empty chairs to get things started here? There are three of them, so they might be meant for us," he suggested. Three empty dark wooden chairs with a red velvet seat lined the table, on the left side of the king. As Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at them, a tension filled the air.

"Do you think that will start the story?" Harry asked. "It seems like the only way to change this situation…"

"We'll only know if we try," Ron answered and he pulled up the chair in the middle. Harry to his right and Hermione to his left copied his movements.

"Here we go…" said Ron and he sat down, followed by the others. In a silence buzzing with anxiety, they all awaited the magical moment in which everything would be put into motion. They waited longer. But their fictional family didn't move a muscle. Disappointment trickled through the anxiety and Hermione turned to Ron and Harry and spoke in a resigned tone:

"We're stuck."


	3. All dressed up

** - Chapter three - **

"Oh, this is marvellous!" Fred yelled as he put a pink swimming cap on George's head. The blue robes George had been wearing disappeared at once and were replaced with yellow-green striped swimming trunks. Diving goggles materialised in around his head and orange flippers appeared on his feet. George imitated a swimming movement in the air and then grabbed a cowboy hat which he put on Fred's head. The green robes Fred had been wearing vanished and made place for a western outfit: brown leather boots on his feet with matching jacket and trousers, and a blade of grass appeared in his mouth and two rusty pistols in his hands.

"Pow!" he said and he pulled the triggers. Two little flags with _Pow! _on them shot out of the pistols. George grabbed his chest in a slow motion movement, as if he had been hit, and fell down on his bed with his mouth stretched open in a painful cry, but before he hit the bed he already couldn't stop himself from laughing anymore. Fred sniggered as well and took his cowboy hat off again. His western outfit disappeared and he was once again clad in green. He plumped onto the bed next to George.

"This is our best invention yet!" he said happily, laying his hat on his lap. "And pink does match your complexion lovely, George. Still I am afraid we'll have to get to work now. Obviously our Changing Headgear works perfectly on ourselves, but not all of our clientele has been blessed with our abundant length and our perfect slim figure," Fred made a Gilderoy Lockhart wink, "so we'll have to test our hats on some shorter persons to see if the size of the clothes will adapt. If you take your swimming cap of for a moment, even though I know you're very attached to it, we won't scare our guinea pigs away the second they see us."

"What, with my beautiful well-muscled body?" George said, putting on a fake indignant tone.

"Alas, the sight of our extremely well developed muscles is too much to handle for ordinary mortals," said Fred and he grabbed the swimming cap off George's head, so that his blue robes reappeared. George exaggerated an irritated sigh and got up.

"Let's go and pester our little brother and his friends then. I would like to see Hermione in only swimming trunks anyway…"

"Oh, George, you dirty twat. Don't you go hitting on Ron's future girlfriend."

"Well, maybe this will help them get together quicker," George suggested, trying to sound innocent.

"Ah, they're just a little slow. Ron's never been fast wtih anything," Fred sniggered. He stooped and picked up a bowler hat, sombrero and a crown and stuffed them in the purple _Weasley's Wizard Wheezes_ suitcase along with the cowboy hat and the swimming cap. Fred en George walked out of their bedroom with the suitcase, to Ron's room, but though they found a lot of orange there, none of it was that of Ron's hair. In Ginny's room, where Hermione slept at night now that Ginny was spending the summer at a friend's house, there was no one either. They checked all the rooms but all of them were empty. So then they stumbled down the stairs to the kitchen. Mister Weasley was sitting at the dinner table, the Daily Prophet spread out in front in front of him, and reading very intently. Mrs Weasley was putting the dishes in the cupboard and looked over her shoulder as she heard the twins coming in.

"Hey Fred and George. Leaving for work already?" she asked.

"No, we're looking for Ron and Harry and Hermione. They're not upstairs. Do you know where they are?"

"I haven't seen them since breakfast, I was busy cleaning up. Have you seen them, Arthur?" Mrs Weasley asked her husband, who didn't even look up from his paper.

"No, I'm sorry, guys," he muttered, absentmindedly.

"Oh, but we could use you as well!" George suddenly thought up. "We have some new products for the shop and we need to test them on-" Now Arthur did look up, a scared look in his eyes, and he got off his chair with a start.

"I'll help you look for them," he said very quickly, before George could finish his sentence. He'd seen too many people on who his sons had tested some of their wares leave the Burrow greener than the grass in their garden, or with more limbs than the amount with which they had come in.

"Maybe they went outside. If you look downstairs I'll take a look around the garden." Mr Weasley said and he hurried out of the door. He sighed when the cold outside air crept up his robes. He walked across the lawn, but he didn't see his son with his friends anywhere. When he passed the garage he saw that the door had been left ajar. That was odd, he always made sure to close it. He didn't want his wife to see how many Muggle objects he had smuggled home from work in all the years he'd worked at the Ministry. She had gone absolutely mad when Ron and Harry had taken the car to Hogwarts. He had never seen her that red before or since... Mr Weasley made to close the door but then realised that the kids maybe opened it. He got a little angry; he hadn't locked the door for nothing. Still, if Harry was there, maybe he could tell him something about that radio he was working on… Mr Weasley opened the door. No one was there, but he saw that a suitcase had been taken from a pile. It lay opened on the floor, with a flashlight which was still shining next to it. The beam of light was clearly visible because of all the dust in the air in the garage. The beam shone on a large book. Surely that wasn't…? Mr Weasley stepped a little closer and then clapped his hand over his mouth. It was. From the cover of the book, his son was staring at him. He was wearing shining silver armour, just as Harry, who was standing on his left side. Hermione was standing behind Ron in a golden dress, with her hand on Ron's shoulder. They were standing completely still, as everyone would be who were in a Muggle illustration.

"Oh dear…" Mr Weasley said as he stared at the book. He picked it up and ran back towards the Burrow. Puffing, he entered the kitchen.

"Molly, they're here!" he said, clutching the book with his hands.

"Huh? What do you mean, Arthur?" Mrs Weasley asked, worried and non-understanding, as she had just seen Arthur run inside in considerable state of panic.

"Inside the book!" Mr Weasley knocked on the cover and then held out the book. "Look."

Mrs Weasley stepped towards him and then let out a small scream as she saw her son and his friends on the book in a Medieval setting. "But Arthur, how is this-"

"Mum! What's up?" Fred and George had come hurrying in when they heard their mother's cry. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes, I am," Mrs Weasley said, though there was so little colour in her face that Fred and George doubted that, "but Ron, Harry and Hermione… They're in here!" She grabbed the tea-towel and sobbed.

"What? Where?" George asked, confused, looking from Mr to Mrs Weasley and back. Mr Weasley swallowed and laid the book on the dinner table. "Here," he said, "they have landed inside the book."

Fred and George looked at the book with a non-understanding frown on their foreheads as they saw who were on the cover. "In _there_? How is that possible?"

Mr Weasley bowed his head and suddenly felt very hot. "It's erm… it's a bewitched Muggle book," he said very quietly.

"Arthur!" Mrs Weasley said and she no longer hid her face in the tea-towel but looked at her husband with great anger brewing behind her eyes. "_Where did they get that book?_"

Mr Weasley turned his head away from his wife. "That would be in erm… my garage," he said, nearly inaudible.

Now Mrs Weasley turned to a shade of red which reminded Mr Weasley very much of how she had looked when his son had laid hand on another Muggle object of his: the flying car. "How could you! Now my baby's in there! And Harry, and Hermione!" Mrs Weasley screamed. She breathed heavily, trying to come up with the right insult, but Fred spoke before she did.

"But… can they get out?" he asked.

"Yes," Mr Weasley said quickly, hoping that this would somewhat lower his wife's temper. Mrs Weasley and twins gave a relieved sigh.

"How? And how did they get in in the first place?" George asked. Mr Weasley dared to look up again and faced the others to tell what he knew about the book.

"The book is bewitched. At first it was a normal Mugglebook, but then a wizard ran across it." Mr Weasley searched his brain for the details of this case. "It happened long ago. I'd only just started at the Ministry…" he continued, and then the story started to come back to him. "We found the book in a Muggle library. There had been a report of a librarian who'd seen a brother and sister disappear into the book. There were quite a lot of eyewitnesses really, there was a lot of fuss erasing all of their memories… Anyway, later it turned out that a wizard had gone to the Muggle library, because he found it very funny to observe Muggles, and stumbled across the book there. Apparently, he found the title very amusing, a stereotype thing for Muggles to say about wizards, and the contents of the book even more so. He thought it would be funny to show the Muggles some real magic and put a spell on the book," Mr Weasley said.

"What kind of spell?" Fred asked.

"On the first page is an illustration, and if you look at it, it makes you go into the book and take the place of a character in the story," Mr Weasley continued. Mrs Weasley had almost returned to her normal colour by now and only looked very worried.

"How can we get them out of the story then, Arthur?" she asked him.

"They have to act out the whole story. From the beginning to the end. Only after that can they leave the book. I remember last time, we had it sent to another department. They were busy all day, reading the story out loud," Mr Weasley said. "The other figures in the book can only come to life when the story is read out loud," he explained. He opened the book, careful to skip the first page with the illustration, to demonstrate what he had just said. The pages of the book smelled very old, after all the years they had spent in the dark suitcase in the garage, and were yellowed, but still perfectly intact. They were filled with writing in black ink and on the upper half of the right page was an illustration of royal looking people sitting at a long table.

"Look," he started as he wanted to show the others how the book worked, but he was answered from a direction he did not expect.

"Mr Weasley?" he heard someone say uncertainly. It had been Hermione's voice that had spoken the name and the words resounded from the page. "Mr Weasley?" she repeated, more urgently now. Mr Weasley saw the figure with brown hair and a golden dress in the illustration turn her head and look around the illustration.

"We're inside the book! Can you hear us too?" she called out.

"Yes! I can even see you!" Mr Weasley said. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, we're fine," Hermione answered him. Mr Weasley saw his son and Harry look around too, but apparently they couldn't see him like he saw them.

"Do you know how we can get out of here, Mr Weasley?" Harry asked. "It seems that we have become characters in this story!"

"Yes, that's how the book works." For a moment, Mr Weasley considered getting mad at his son and his friends for rummaging around his stuff, but then he remembered Molly was standing next to him and that it would be unwise to repeat that this book had been among _his_ stuff. "We can get you out, but it will take some time. You will have to play your roles in the story to be able to leave it. Throughout the whole story," he said.

"But no one except for us is even moving here! And how are we supposed to know our roles?" Ron commented.

"The story will come to life when it's read out loud," Mr Weasley said.

"Then who's going to read it?" Harry asked.

Mr and Mrs Weasley gave each other and Fred and George a questioning look. The twins were looking each other in the eye enthusiastically. "We will read it! Can we read it, dad?" Fred and George said greedily. "We'll take it with us to the shop and read in turns!". The twins were making little jumps.

"Well… yes, of course," Mr Weasley said, surprised with the sudden excitement.

"Ha! I'd love to make Ron ride a horse and sword fight because my voice is telling him too!" George said. "This is going to be _so_ much fun!" Fred added and both twins were rubbing their hands. Protesting noises started to rise from the book, but George interrupted them.

"What characters are you guys?" he asked.

"We think Ron and me are princes, and Hermione a princess," Harry said.

"Ron's a prince?" George whistled. "Does that mean he's going to be king?" he added enthusiastically.

"Well, I guess-" Harry started, but the rest of his sentence wasn't heard because Fred en George broke into loud singing.

"_Weasley is our king! Weasley is our king!_" they sang, performing a little dance. In the illustration, Mr Weasley saw Hermione, Ron and Harry look at each other as if Hagrid had just entrusted a Blast-Ended Skrewt to their care, and collectively the four of them heaved a very deep sigh…


	4. Meeting History

**Author's note:_ Long time no see :D. Have been rather busy, exams and all, but right now I'm secretly taking a break to revive my characters for a bit :-). I've got the idea my English is kinda rusty at the moment, so please help me to correct my mistakes. Of course, all comments are very welcome. In this chapter we will see how the story of the book will evolve. Hope you enjoy it! _  
**

** - Chapter four - **

After a while, Fred and George finished their dancing and singing and settled themselves at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee

"Great, a bit of caffeine to get them even more excited," Harry said under his breath, but Fred and George didn't hear him and laid the book in front of them.

"All right," George said. "Time to get those tights moving. Here we go…" he searched the page with his finger and stopped at a large O, decorated with red flowers.

"_Once upon a time in a far land, a rich king of the House of Woldshire lived in his castle. Many years now, he had ruled his kingdom, with his queen at his side. She had given him two sons and a daughter."_

George's voice had melted the frozen blood in the veins of the characters inside the book. The persons at the table had finally started eating the food which they had held at the tips of their forks for so long. The queen elegantly sipped her wine and the king tore a piece bread in two. Harry, Ron and Hermione enthusiastically moved closer to the table.

"Fred! George! It's working, they're moving!" Ron said.

"That was the general idea, little brother," Fred said en resumed reading. "_A festive dinner was held to celebrate the coming of age the oldest son, Prince Leofwine", _a snorting sound from outside the book interrupted the reading for a moment, and Harry and Ron cast each other worrying glances, "_His birthday had been bound to his engagement to the lady Milburh and so the two fiancées sat side by side at the dinner table._" Hermione and Ron shot backwards in their chairs simultaneously, as if afraid to touch each other all of the sudden, and both suddenly felt that the fire in the room was burning very hot… This time, sounds of muffled laughter could be heard, not only from the twins but from Harry as well. Hermione's cheeks were nearly as red as Ron's, which was quite a thing to accomplish. The embarrassing moment was over as the king cleared his throat. As if he was being dubbed, his deep voice sounded doubled by that of Fred, who was reading out what the king had to say:

"Now that we all have something to eat, I think this is the moment to properly welcome lady Milburh, who will soon be a part of this family." The king gave Hermione a welcoming smile and Hermione returned it. The queen was not looking quite as welcoming and peered over her glass of wine inquisitively. Then her thin lips pressed together in a small smile, which was not matched by her eyes and drank a sip of her wine.

"I am sure that you will make my eldest son Leofwine very happy and provide him with strong heirs. My wife Fallacia has done well to introduce you, her niece, to us" the king added warmly and looked at his wife happily. Harry mouthed "incest" at his plate. Fred and George seemed to have decided that extensively laughing at everything in the book slowed down the reading too much and only a small giggle interrupted the reading.

Then a strange thing happened to Hermione. She felt how her head bowed modestly en how her eyes were cast down, without her brains ordering it to do so. Instead, Fred had ordered them: "_Lady Milburh bowed respectfully at this welcoming_", he had said. It was unlike the Imperius Curse, which made you forget all about who you were and made everything as simple as just one voice which needed to be obeyed. Instead, Hermione was still very aware of who she was. There was no hand pushing her head down. It was more like a reflex: Fred was a doctor who had hit her on the knee and made her make movements she couldn't control. Hermione tried to resume her normal position but her muscles didn't seem to be bound to her own will anymore. She succeeded only when Fred continued to the next sentence. This one described how everyone resumed eating and so everyone did that and the persons around the table engaged in several conversations.

"Soon the time for you to wed will come too, little sister" Ron said to the girl with the long reddish hair, simultaneously with Fred, or rather, Prince Leofwine said it. Just as Hermione had experienced it, Ron felt his mouth open and his tongue working to form words he had not decided on himself. An indignant frown formed on his forehead as he spoke. However, before he could properly start making protesting noises after he had finished his sentence, the sister spoke.

"Yes, let us hope that Mother will find an eligible candidate for me too soon. Still, for now I am happy that there is girl of my age besides my maids. We can make embroideries together. Maybe you could learn me some new melodies on the harpsichord!" she added enthusiastically. Hermione tried not to snort but failed and pretended she was coughing.

"I am sure that you will be able to learn me a lot," she said truthfully. She was glad the book didn't describe the rest of their conversation but instead that of the queen and the king on finding a suitable partner for their daughter, so that Hermione was free to speak as she pleased.

The sister didn't seem to see Hermione's reaction for what it really was and happily started to sum up the songs she had lately learned to play and some special embroidery patterns she had made up herself. The sister reminded Hermione a lot of Lavender talking about the latest fashion in robe adornments. Hermione heaved a relieved sigh when she realised there were probably no _Ruby Robe_ outlets inside this book in which she would have to hang around for endless afternoons saying that that particular pink brooch looked lovely with those lilac robes. Next to her, she heard Ron and Harry discuss the Imperius Curse-like effect the book had had on Ron under their breath.

"I would be able to resist it!" she heard Harry say. "The Imperius Curse has no effect on me!"

"No, you couldn't," Ron objected, whispering, "just wait till it happens to you!"

Hermione leaned in. "Ron is right, it _is_ different than the Imperius Curse. It is not a matter of not obeying an order or something, you just _do_ something, you can't-"

Out of the corner of the eye, Hermione saw the sister looking at her rather disappointed. She had stopped in the middle of a sentence when Hermione didn't seem to listen to the interesting aspects of the daring orange-red combination in her latest embroidery anymore. Hermione felt a bit guilty (was she feeling guilty for a fictional character now?) and was about to ask something about embroidering techniques to relieve that feeling when a guard in rattling chain mail approached the king and scraped his throat.

"My king, two strangers request entrance to the castle to speak with you. They will not give their names, nor their business with you" the guard said in a rasping voice. The King had a questioning look about his face and at this the guard added: "They do look to be of wealthy standard, sir". The dark eyes of the Queen were fixed upon her husband.

"Well, fine then…" the King said, looking at his wife rather hesitatingly. "Let them in."

All the people at the table looked at the door inquiringly. It scraped over the floor as the guard dragged it open and the rusty handle banged against the wood. Now there was no nothingness behind the door. A dark blue sky filled with stars and the dark outlines of a bridge (probably over the castle moat) could be seen. Behind it the shadows of a forest loomed. The sound of splashing water found their ears and rain wetted the stone tiles of the floor. The two strangers walked inside, one very tall and one shorter, with a bent back. Water dripped from their dark robes. The tallest of the two strangers cast his hood off. Dark hair framed a very light face down to the chin. The eyes in the face seemed to absorb light instead of reflecting it, two black holes in the middle of his face. The other one kept his face hidden. "I am Earpwald," the tall man said, not caring for any politeness. His voice was so low, that the furniture seemed to vibrate along with it. Unrecognisable golden signs on the robes gleamed in the firelight and for a moment, Harry saw a long, wooden shape flicker in the dark folds of the robes.

"He's got a wand!" Harry said and now Hermione and Ron saw it too, as Earpwald brought his wand out in the open in his right hand. Earpwald eyed Harry with interest and smiled in an unpleasant way.

"I do indeed," he said and he held his wand in front of him as if he were threatening them with a sword. "So you had better pay attention to what I say. Yes, you too! Especially you, Fallacia." he said to the Queen. She had been looking at her pale hands which lay shaking on the table, very intently not facing the men the door opening. Now she looked up at Earpwald, and though she kept sitting bolt upright, the pride was out of her pose and her dark eyes were large with fear.

"Though it is not for you that I have come. Your time has passed. I will not have you anymore," Earpwald said with disdain. The Queen was breathing heavily. She seemed to be anticipating something she dreaded, but did not act to prevent it.

"Your time for choosing is now long ago," Earpwald continued. "You could have been mine, with all that I had to offer you…" The King looked at his wife, in an alarmed and non-understanding way, but she did not face him. He was about to open his mouth, but Earpwald didn't allow him to and resumed speaking.

"And even more I have to offer now. Yet you left me, despite the loving years of our youth we shared in the lands where we were born. You left me for him. For _him_! His wealth, his title!" Earpwald spat out these words as though they were bitter poison on his tongue. The face of the King grew red, but his wife still didn't offer him a reassuring or apologizing look. She was shaking with tension and looked filled with shame.

"But you promised yourself to me. A promise to me" he said menacingly, "will not be broken." Now the king laid his large hand on the slender arm of his wife possessively. "You will not-" he growled, but was again prevented to speak.

"No, I will not take Fallacia. I said so. She is no longer pure," Earpwald said and both contempt and regret could be heard in his voice. The Queen looked as though she had been hit in the face.

"Fallacia will have to be compensated. If she will not fulfil her promise, I will do that as I see fit," Earpwald said and he raised his wand high in to the air, announcing that something was to come. Harry stood up and his hand shot into his pocket in a reflex, but of course it was no use, his wand was not inside the book. The Wizard spoke unrecognisable words as an incantation, his voice even deeper than it had been before, and with a large, purple flash from his wand, the whole room was filled with smoke as dense as though they were all under the surface of a lake filled with grey water. Harry coughed, but shove his chair away and ran in the direction of the door, stumbling over what felt as a heavy rug. Ron and Hermione went after him. When the three of them got to the door opening the thick smoke turned into wisps which mingled with the damp air outside and they saw Earpwald mount a very strange animal: it had a fur of orange with dark stripes as a tiger, yet it was mixed with what seemed like grey hairs. The body looked like that of a tiger too, with large paws, but it was slimmer, more like a horse's. The head was an elongated version of that of a feline with very large white teeth which shone menacingly in the darkness. Earpwald pulled a girl in front of him: the sister with long reddish hair.

"Ethel!", Harry yelled, finally experiencing the controlling enchantment of the book like the others, but he was too much concerned with the situation to care. The sister looked over at them in agony, but the wizard urged the creature forward and the beast sped away. The large deep red skirt of Ethel flapped on the sides of the beast and her pale face could be seen looking at them until the beast with its two riders and the bird that flew after them were hidden in the darkness of the night. Harry tried to run after them and his friends went after him, but they gave up after a few yards. It was hopeless; the creature was much faster than any of them. So all three of them stood panting on the middle of the drawbridge under the dark sky. For a moment, their silence was only disturbed by their sharp intakes of the cold night air.

"I believe this is going to be more exciting than we were expecting…" Hermione finally said, sounding concerned, and judging by their worried looks, the boys seemed to agree. From outside the book came more sounds of agreement.

"Yes indeed!" Fred exclaimed. "This is demanding more from my artistic and vocal abilities than I could ever have expected. How about some more coffee, George?"

"Sounds lovely, dear" George answered his brother in an effeminate voice and the two of them dropped the book, at which it fell shut, and walked off.

The royal family, which had just started coming outside, froze on the spot.

"Guess this is going to take some time," Ron said and he walked past the frozen King and Queen and the guard to the fireplace with Hermione. Harry cast one last look to the dark shapes of the trees and then followed the others.


	5. Uncovering and Discussing

**_Author's note:_ I was feeling like writing today, so here is another chapter. A chapter with a bit of romance... Of course confusing as romance always is.  
**

** - Chapter 5 - **

"Now, that was a rather stereotypical dark wizard, don't you think?" Hermione said to Ron and Harry. They were sitting in front of the fireplace on a large red rug and the firelight caused flickering shadows across their faces. "Walking into the story in black robes covered in mysterious signs and kidnapping the first girl he comes across with purple flashes and a lot of smoke…"

"Well, it _is_ a fairytale after all," Harry said. "It's just a pity that he has a wand and we don't. I mean, if smokescreens are the best he can do…"

"I don't think we would have been able to really change the storyline anyway. Whenever our characters do something crucial, it is beyond our control. Or do you think you can fight it, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"No, it was like you said." Harry tried to recall the strange feeling that had struck him when he had been running after the sister, the way his mouth moved as though it hadn't been his own. "It was like… like the connection between my will and part of my body was broken… I couldn't repair it till Fred's voice didn't command me anymore."

"We just need to go along with the story, the sooner it will all be over," Ron said. "Maybe it will even be a lot of fun, we could be like the medieval knights, saving the damsel in distress!"

When Harry said "Just like in the movies!" Ron didn't bother to ask what that was, perhaps that was what living with the Muggle-lover he had as a father for years had taught him.

"I'm just glad I'm not the damsel in distress," Hermione said. "I wouldn't like to be locked up in the castle of that creep for the rest of the story. Some medieval writers really had some pervy ideas, you know…" She shuddered. "Still, I suppose one of you has to go on the rescue mission and I will have to wait here. Embroidering, no doubt…"

"Well, you could always have some fun with the hunky guard over there," Harry teased her, pointing at the frozen guard in chain mail at the door opening. "Or start some interesting intrigue with your father-in-law." Harry laughed. "At least you won't have to marry Ron anymore in that case."

Ron did not seem quite as amused, in fact, his degree of redness seemed to indicate suppressed anger. Even Harry, though he was ignorant of emotions of others most of the time as all boys, seemed to notice this and quickly he spoke tactfully:

"Look, of course we'll bring Hermione, we'll say she can practice her needlework while the men," - disdainful snort of Hermione, which Harry ignored - "do the fighting."

"Yeah, sure…" Hermione said, "but we really should try to stick together. We'll see what we can do to persuade the characters in the story."

"Persuade the characters in the story to do what? Really, Hermione, you've only been inside the castle for one chapter and you're already hitting on the King? Never knew you did the whole seduce-rich-men-thing…" a voice from outside the book said.

"Ha, Fred and George, you are back," Hermione said stiffly.

"Yes, we are. Isn't it great?" George said. "And with coffee as well. Bet you can't find that at that feast." He took a large gulp of his coffee and spilled some of the hot fluid on the illustration of the book. "Oops…". The golden yellow of Hermione's dress absorbed the coffee and a brown stain appeared on the skirt.

"George! Or Fred! You're ruining my dress!" Hermione said angrily.

"Whoo, somebody's touchy here…" George said as he wiped the book with his robe. "Afraid you'll make a bad impression on the King? Or perhaps that your dear fiancée-"

"No!" Hermione said and her voice broke. She scraped her throat and tried to continue more calmly: "No. But just… just read on, will you. All your fooling around is taking ages," she said, letting her brown curls fall around her face so that the others couldn't see her expression.

"Fine, fine it is… Command your humble slaves," George said mockingly. "I will take up the story from here, so Fred can have a bit of a break..."

Hermione, Ron and Harry got up and walked towards their fictional family, which started moving again. The King looked beaten as he stared into dark forest. The lines on his face which had looked kind and warm at first, now clashed with the intensely morose look in his eyes. The Queen stood next to him and her eyes looked fearfully in the same direction. She was the first to speak after a while and turned to Ron.

"Leofwine, my eldest son, you will have to retrieve her," she said. At this, the King turned his head towards them abruptly.

"This man knows of witchcraft, you saw it. We have all seen it. What can our simple blades do against such sorcery?" he said desperately. "Will you have me lose my other child as well?" he snapped at his wife. The King still clearly felt betrayed by the fact that his wife had promised herself to another man in her younger years. The Queen was not silenced by this and spoke to her husband as long-winded as he had spoken to her.

"Will you give up our only daughter like that? There is no force of darkness which cannot be beaten by that of light. Our sons have been raised to be strong and just and pious. Right is at our side," she said. "God is at our side. And Earpwald is only human."

"Yes, you would know all about that, wouldn't you?" the King said, looking as painful as though his wife had thrust a knife in between his ribs. This time the Queen did dare to look in the King's eyes but her cheeks filled with colour as she did so. She attempted to take his hand but the King turned away. Ron almost felt embarrassed to intrude into a conversation so personal, even though it was only a story.

"Cynewold…" the Queen said with her eyes cast down, "I was young. We all make mistakes. And my final promise was to you," she reminded him. The King looked over his shoulder sternly. "I can help Leofwine beat Earpwald with my knowledge. I know his whereabouts!" she begged. The king's expression softened somewhat.

"He lives near the village in which I grew up, the village of my family. He lives in a castle in the East," she added quickly.

"All right," the King said finally, though he did not sounds thoroughly forgiving. "We will speak more of you later," he said with a rather menacing look in his eyes. "Now we must act quickly, if we indeed choose to act."

"I would be honoured to take this quest upon me," Ron said as Prince Leofwine, not trying to resist the enchantment anymore, but still looking rather ill at ease.

"So would I be to join him in battle," Harry said as Prince Wigmær. "Together we will be able to beat him." It was strange to hear their own mouths speak such words, words they would never have strung together themselves.

The Queen looked more at ease now that her sons were willing to do as she pleased.

"Fine," the King said. He look even more worried than he did before, but decisive too. "The two of you will rescue your sister. You will be equipped with the family weapons and armour and shall be given the two fastest horses, so that you may ride to Ethel with haste."

"Erm…" Harry interrupted him. The King looked in his direction, surprised that his son would interrupt him while he was speaking. "I… I just wanted to say, erm… can't we take Her-, I mean, Lady Mildburh with us?" he stuttered. The King and Queen looked at him with questioning frowns. Was Harry changing the storyline now? Or was it unimportant whether Hermione would join in?

"I mean, I just think," he cast an apologizing look at Ron and Hermione beside him, "it would be good for the fiancées to get to know each other a little better." Harry felt he sounded stupid next to the eloquently speaking King and Queen.

Both the King and Queen looked surprised, but Harry saw a little light kindled in the eyes of the Queen. She smiled.

"Yes, these two young people can get acquainted with each other by doing this together. They'll learn what it's like to depend on each other. Don't you think, Cynewold?" she said, as she turned to her husband for confirmation.

The King didn't quite seem to agree. "But she… she's a woman!" he said.

"She can lead our sons to the right place. She was born in the village from which I came, remember? She knows the area well," the Queen said.

"And I can take care of them during the travelling and… and when they get hurt," Hermione said, trying not to think about the last thing she had said. Surely they couldn't get hurt inside this book…? The King looked upon her, as if he were judging whether she was fit for the job. Hermione felt unsure. Had all he had said at her welcoming only been light-hearted? She couldn't bear to cast her eyes down modestly again, so she looked straight into the eyes of the king, with her wish to join in with the boys burning in her eyes. Then apparently the King decided to approve of her and stopped his taxing look.

"You may join them. I trust that you will take good care of my sons. This is your chance to prove you are worthy of being a part of the House of Woldshire," the King said. The Queen nodded approvingly. Hermione could tell the royal couple was glad that it had been decided how things would be done.

"Then now it is time to go to bed. It is not wise to ride off in the middle of the night. The servants will prepare all that you will need to take with you, so that tomorrow morning you can depart."

The King and Queen seemed to decided that the matter had been decided and they walked inside. Harry, Ron and Hermione followed at a small distance.

"Well, that went all right," Ron said, sounding relieved.

"Yeah, whatever's coming, at least we'll be together," Hermione said.

Behind them, the guard closed the large wooden door. Two ladies-of-the-bedchamber in plain blue dresses guided Hermione to her room. The room was upstairs, with walls, floor and ceiling of stone, just like the dining room, but with richly decorated rugs on the floor and mirrors with golden rims with female figures in elegant poses on them. The most beautiful was the four-poster in the middle of the room, with red fabric with biblical depictions on it, which draped down from a dark wooden frame. As Hermione was looking around the room, one of the girls started untying her dress.

"Whoaa!" Hermione yelled, "I'm quite capable of doing that myself," she said, grabbing the cords on the back of her dress and turning away from the girl. The girl looked at her very frightened and started making excuses.

"My Lady, I'm very sorry, I thought-"

"It's all right," Hermione interrupted her quickly, she didn't want to talk the poor thing into a guilt complex. "Please, just-… just leave and let me do it myself," she said. The girl hurried out of the room, followed by the other one.

"And that's the same for you, Fred en George!" she yelled at the giggling persons above the book. "The chapter is over! Close the book!" she said hotly. Fred and George's turned into a fit of laughter. Hermione pulled the cords of her dress tighter. "Close it! Now!"

"All right, all right," Fred said. "Just when the story was finally getting exciting…" – Hermione was throwing various not-so-nice terms at him – "All right!" he said quickly for the last time and closed the book.

Hermione heaved a sigh of relief and rummaged in one of the drawers of a wardrobe and picked out a plain dress of white fabric with little flowers on it, which kind of looked like a nightgown. She fumbled with the cords on the back of her dress and started to understand why rich ladies had servants to help them with that. Finally she managed to get the various layers of clothing she was wearing off and she was about to put the nightgown on when she heard something at the door. When she turned around, she saw Ron's pale face in the door opening.

"You pervert!" she screamed, frantically covering her body with the piece of clothing. "You're as bad as your brothers! Worse!" she yelled. Ron looked as frozen as a character out of the book without a voice directing it, and even more thoroughly frightened than the lady-of-the-chamber had just been. "Get out! GET OUT!" she screamed, her voice much higher than it usually was. Ron came back to his senses en looking totally bewildered he hurried out of the room, closing the door behind him with a bang. Hermione quickly pulled on the nightgown and then stood there in the middle of the room, breathing wildly. Then her intakes of breath turned into sobs and tears slid down her face. She sat down against her bed and let her brown curls fall into her face and stick to her wet cheeks. She had thought he was different. Different! How did she ever get that idea! He was as bad as any boy, as any Krum. _Not of the talkative kind_, Krum had called himself. Well, no boy was. They didn't care about talking. They didn't care about the fact that she actually had something intelligent to say. Unless they wanted her to do their homework, that was. Angrily Hermione brushed a brown curl out of her face. No, she had to turn up with her body nicely exposed in dress robes and her hair slacked back elegantly to finally be considered an interesting person. Or stand naked in a room with only a piece of clothing half covering her. She became red in the face by just thinking of it. To think that she would have to be with Ron for the rest of the story. The shame… They wouldn't be able to look at each other anymore. Not that Ron had properly dared to do that before. But now he really wouldn't do that anymore. The way she had screamed at him… But he had deserved it. The dirty –

Knocking on the door prevented Hermione from starting a long torrent of abuse. Hermione didn't react to the knocking and turned her head away from the door.

"Hermione?" she heard a voice say unsurely. Harry's voice. "Hermione?" he repeated.

"Come to have a peek as well, have you?" she snapped at him, drawing her knees up and hiding her head between them.

"No," Harry said indignantly, "Hermione, what do you mean? What's going on?"

Hermione felt tempted to say something like 'all men are pigs' but realised the cliché and instead remained silent. She heard the door creak as Harry opened it. When she looked at the door out of the corner of the eye she saw two green eyes stare at her intensely worried.

"Hey, what's going on?" Harry repeated. After hesitating a bit, he came in and closed the door behind him. He approached her until he was only a few feet away and then he kneeled. He looked at her through the mass of brown curls. "I heard some… raised voices," Harry said tactfully, instead of 'hysterical screaming', "coming from here so I just wanted to check whether you were all right,-"

"I'm fine," Hermione interrupted him brusquely, but Harry continued:

"And while I was on my way I ran into Ron who was looking really upset and ran down the hall without saying anything… What's happened?" he asked. He saw Hermione's wet cheeks glow red. And then he remembered what she had said when he had knocked on the door, about 'having a peek'. "Hermione, Ron was not, he was not… _peeking_ or anything. We were trying to find our rooms, our servants just froze halfway up the stairs so we had to find them ourselves," Harry explained. "He was just checking whether the room was empty," he said. Hermione looked at him, stopping her sobbing.

"Really," Harry said. There was a moment of silence. "Were you-"

"I was getting into my nightgown," Hermione said, not facing Harry at this point. She felt kind of naked again, even though she was wearing the nightgown.

"Oh…" Harry said. "Oh, I see…" He felt rather akward.

Hermione wiped her cheeks and got all of her hair out of her face. "And the twins, they… they were being annoying about me putting on other clothes as well. But I was just… just being silly," she said, shaking her head. "Just a misunderstanding, all of it," she said quickly. "Will you tell Ron I'm sorry?" she asked Harry.

"Yeah, that's fine. I erm… he looked just as shocked as you, you know. I think he's sorry as well," Harry said.

"Okay," Hermione said and she managed a little smile. "I'm glad you came," she said, after a short pause.

"Well… I'm just glad we've got this out of the way. We've probably got a long way to go together in this story," Harry said.

"Yeah," Hermione said. "Well, thanks, Harry." And then, a little hesitatingly, she hugged Harry. Harry was taken by surprise and was a bit startled, but then he put his arms around her. Why did this feel so strange all of the sudden? Was it because she had just been crying? Or because of the reason she had been crying? To think of the reason made him feel uneasy, to think of Ron and the twins like that. Harry was very aware Hermione's warm body under the thin fabric of her gown. That felt thoroughly wrong. He recoiled and stood up.

"We'd better get a good night's sleep," Harry said quickly, "Goodnight." And he hurried out of the room.

"Goodnight…" said Hermione to the closing door.


	6. Painful Situations

**_Author's note:_ yawns It's four thirty in the morning. My third chapter today. Well, today. One might call this tomorrow. Fanfic is baaaaad for me... In six hours I have to be off again... :s. Well, anyway, enough complaining. Our friends start their quest in this chapter but horse riding turns out to be more difficult than they were expecting... Tension between the three of them is growing. Some feedback on what I've produced today would be appreciated. Well, I'm off to bed.  
**

**- Chapter 6 - **

The next morning, Hermione was awoken by two large blue eyes which peered through a slit in the fabric of the four-poster. As soon as Hermione had opened her eyes, the girl which had tried to take off her dress the day before nervously started to make excuses again.

"My Lady, I am sorry to wake you, really sorry, but it is requested that you prepare yourself for leaving," said her quivering voice.

"Okay, okay, that's fine," Hermione tried to say as nice as she could, but this changed nothing in the expression of the girl. Hermione didn't expect that things would ever go normal between them. She was glad to be leaving today. The girl took away one of curtains of the four-poster so that Hermione could get out and Hermione yawned.

"Rise and shine!" Fred said. "You've slept all through our lunch." It had seemed like a lot longer to Hermione. Apparently the time outside the book was not always the same as that inside the book. Hermione got out of bed and assembled the various parts of her dress, with which she wrestled for a while behind the curtains of her four-poster till she had them on again. Bit too smart for adventuring, perhaps, she thought as she went down the stairs. Well, Fred and George had ruined the skirt with their coffee anyway. When she arrived downstairs, she sat down at the dining table and the King and Queen greeted her and she wished them a good morning. She was not looking forward to the moment when Ron would come down and she spent a few minutes fumbling with a piece of bread without taking any real bites. Finally she heard the voices and footsteps of the two boys coming down the stairs. The talking died down a few feet behind her. Hermione took a deep breath and turned around.

"I'm sorry," Ron and Hermione said simultaneously to each other.

"You're sorry?" echoed the twins. "For what?" Fred asked eagerly, but no one answered him.

Ron and Hermione didn't really dare to look each other in the face. Ron did seem to be red more often than his usual pale self lately, Hermione thought. Ron looked away quickly and took the chair where Harry had sat the day before, one chair away from Hermione. Harry settled himself in between them. He tried to make conversation, but Hermione and Ron both were suddenly very busy eating breakfast. The King and Queen looked at them enquiringly, but all three of them pretended they didn't see. After a while, the King decided that it was time for them to go.

"The sun has risen. It is time for you to set out on your quest," he said. He looked grave. All of them got up. In front of the drawbridge stood two grey horses and a white one, complete with saddles and reins decorated with white flowers, which apparently were the symbol for the House of Woldshire. The boys had been clad in heavy armour with similar decorations and both had a sword (Hermione didn't feel very comfortable about the fact that she hadn't been given any form of protection). The horses had full saddlebags too, probably filled with food. They were well prepared for a long journey.

"I can't ride a horse!" Ron whispered.

"Neither can I," Harry whispered back at him. The one time he had ridden a pony on a fair hadn't been a success, though that might have had something to do with Dudley constantly poking the beast. Hermione just looked up to the large beasts fearfully. She had never been one of those horse riding-girls.

The King and Queen stood beside each other, arm in arm.

"I give you my blessing, my sons. Fight with honour. Return to me with your sister," the King said to Ron and Harry. "Take care of my sons as though they were your own brothers, my Lady" he said to Hermione. She nodded.

"I shall pray for you," the Queen said.

"Farewell, my King and Queen," Hermione felt herself say and her body kneeled with her head bowed. The boys bade farewell to their fictional parents as well and the King and Queen said goodbye to them all. The situation felt very solemn.

Now it was time for them to mount their horses. Ron tried to do it with a certain dignity, being the oldest son after all, but soon noticed that a horse was very different from a broomstick. He watched Harry, who did seem to know what the general idea was. He saw Harry put a foot in one of the stirrups, dragging himself up by the saddle and swaying his other leg over to the other side of the horse (apparently the ride on the pony _had_ paid off). It didn't look all that elegant, but Ron couldn't think of another way to do it, so he settled for this one. He stood at the left side of his white horse and put his left foot in the stirrup. He pulled himself up, luckily he did have some strength in his arms, but ended up on facing the bottom of the horse instead of its head. He decided it was best not to look at the King and Queen at this point. After a lot of wriggling, which made the horse move around very restlessly, he finally sat right. All this messing around in plate mail was making him feel very hot and he wiped his forehead. He looked at Harry, who seemed to be having fun examining his sword and armour ('_and we all know, the bigger the sword, the smaller the…_' Ron thought and he grinned). Behind Harry, Hermione was still standing beside her horse, looking rather hopeless. They were probably looking like real geeks, Ron thought. Finally a maid shot forward to help Hermione.

"How do I get up?" Hermione whispered to the girl. "The saddle is all weird. I can't get my leg to the other side."

"Oh, but my Lady, you mustn't put your leg on the other side," the girl said and then the girl whispered to Hermione in confidential tones: "It is not fit for a Lady to spread her legs."

"But then how can I ever-" Hermione started, but then she decided there wasn't really anything she could do and she allowed herself to be settled astride on her horse. As if horse riding wasn't difficult enough without having to be afraid of losing your balance all the time.

"I suppose we should be going," Harry said, with a rather sadistic smile at Hermione.

Hermione did her best at ignoring him and gave her horse a small kick in the side to get it moving. That's what she'd always seen the other girls do. And it worked. Of the three horses, hers was de first to move off. Soon Harry and Ron imitated her and came after her. The horses proceeded in an elegant trot and though all three of them found riding on horses rather more bumpy than they had expected, they didn't fall down. When they reached the edge of the forest, they looked over their shoulder and saw the royal couple give them a last nod, after which they went back towards the caste, over the drawbridge.

"So, just the three of us now," Ron said contently. "This horse riding is not very comfortable or fast, but it's better than walking anyway." Hermione just grumbled.

After riding amidst the trees for a while, they saw a broad path of mud, which winded along a river. The horses liked this path much better than walking in the grass whilst having to evade trees, and they had noticed from the moment their riders had tried to mount them, that they themselves were the ones in control. So as soon as their hooves hit the mud, their trot turned into a wild gallop. Hermione screamed and the boys turned very white and flung their arms around the necks of their horses to have some grip. Hermione tried this too, but because her legs were only on one side of the horse she kept sliding down further with every stride of the horse.

"Stop! STOP!" she screamed, but of course it was no use. The muscles in her arms, which were clutched around the horses neck, tensed up. Mud spattered on her dress and in her face. "Ron! Harry! Make it stop!" she yelled out hopelessly. Her arms grew more and more painful and eventually she couldn't hold on anymore and she fell of the horse. It wasn't a long way down anymore as she had almost slid down as low as the ground, but the horse was going very fast and she fell on left leg and after that she fell face down in the mud. Moaning with pain, she grabbed her leg, which felt as though it had been slit open with a knife and bent much too far at the ankle. Hermione got her face out of the mud and saw how her red blood mingled with the brown mud. After that she looked at the path, and saw how her horse was running off. Harry and Ron's horses were still doing the same, but she saw how the boys were pulling the reins very hard, and indeed after a while, their two horses slowed down and the boys managed to make them turn around and steer them back to Hermione.

At last the hoofs stopped and Ron and Harry jumped of their horses and ran towards Hermione with the reins in their hands.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked, panting.

"Yes," Hermione answered, her voice feeble, "but my leg…" She moved her leg in front of her with her hands and rolled up a piece of her skirt, which was now coloured a bright red and was torn in several places. Her lower leg was revealed, with large cuts across it with little stones in them, probably caused by the stones of the riverbank which lay at the side of the path. Ron turned white at the sight of the wounds and decided to keep himself busy with attaching the reins to a tree for a moment. Harry kneeled beside Hermione and laid his hands on her leg.

"Do you think something's broken?" he asked her, searching along her leg.

"Not the leg," Hermione said. Though it felt like small knives were puncturing the skin every moment, the bone felt intact. "But my ankle, it feels like it's been twisted in a wrong direction. Can one break an ankle? Or do you think it's sprained or something?" she asked.

"I don't know…" Harry said. "Shall we try to take your boot off?" He started untying the laces. The ankle felt very hot and much too big to fit into that boot. Carefully, Harry made the boot as wide as possible and shove it down the foot and ankle slowly. The ankle was red and much broader than it was supposed to be, but it wasn't in an unnatural angle.

"I don't think it's broken. Still, it looks nasty. We need to put it in splints. And we need bandage for those wounds. I'll go and look what we've got with us in those saddlebags, all right?" Harry asked Hermione.

"Yes," Hermione answered him. He would make a perfect doctor, she thought. He was so calm. It reassured her.

Then Ron came up to her. He had fastened the reins of the horses with a triple knot, so he couldn't put off coming any longer. He looked to be on the verge off throwing up at the sight of all the blood, and of course especially at the sight of Hermione's blood, but sat down next to her and took off the top piece of his armour and then one of the layers of clothing he was wearing underneath it. He folded it carefully. He seemed to want to put it under Hermione's leg and reached out with his arms, but recoiled when he almost touched her leg. The images of the night before came back to both of them and Hermione was a bit flustered but she appreciated the gesture.

"It's all right," she said softly, and Ron looked up at her with fearful eyes and then lifted her leg with care and laid the fabric under it so that it wasn't lying in the mud anymore. Hermione and Ron gave each other a weak smile and then Harry returned, slightly grinning at the sight of the two, but with a weird unpleasant feeling in his lower stomach as well.

"We'll have to improvise," he said, regaining himself. Solving things was a lot simpler than all these feelings. "I found this," he held up a white cloth, "we can use it as a bandage. But the stones will have to go out of the wounds first. We can't really disinfect the wounds, but keeping the stones inside them is asking for trouble. And about the splint… The best we can do for a splint is using some twigs, but I doubt whether that will be useful. We can wrap the ankle in slivers of the cloth." And so the two boys sat down on either side of her leg and started taking out the stones. It probably wasn't much fun for the boys, as they sat there, working in silence. Hermione's leg prickled badly. She also felt very awkward, her skirt up like that and the two boys working on her leg. She looked from the blue eyes under the red hair to the startling green ones behind the round spectacles. It was a weird situation she had landed in. Stuck with her two best friends in the wilderness. A tickling sensation in her stomach as she sat there, indicated that she couldn't even be that sure of simple friendship anymore. She tried to think of something else and looked around the scenery. She sat halfway between the mud path and the river, which flowed wildly over grey stones which glistened in the sunlight. Next to the path stood trees with broad dark stems which split into small branches laden with pale green leaves. On one of the branches sat a violently red bird with a beak which seemed to be made of gold and dark circles around its gleaming eyes. It stared at her intently.

"We're done," Harry said. He tore a piece of the cloth and wound it around her leg. He tugged the ends under the cloth that was tight around the leg. "Let's hope this will hold…" he said unsurely.

After that, Harry and Ron tore what was left of the cloth into slivers and bound it around her ankle. "This will have to do," Harry said.

"Thanks a lot, guys," Hermione said, smiling feebly at both of them. "But I don't think that I can continue yet… and my horse is gone," she said, sounding kind of apologetic.

"Don't you worry about that. One of us will take you. If you dare to go on a horse with us, that is," Harry said with a smile. "Now we'll rest for a bit. But not in this pool of mud." Ron was clearly taller and stronger than Harry, and so, a bit shy, he placed one arm behind Hermione's back and his other under her knees and carried her to the other side of the path and settled her on the grass, with her back against a tree trunk. For a while, they sat there, drinking some water of the river in silence. Harry and Ron had just started preparing themselves for leaving again, when a brown horse sped past them at great speed, ridden by a cloaked figure and with riding gear decorated with white flowers, so it was a royal horse. The red bird flew after it and both the animals soon disappeared, as they followed the path when it turned right some hundred yards away.  
"Pfah," Ron said moodily, "people who _can_ ride horses properly." He cast a jealous look in the direction of the bend of the path.

"It's about time we started riding again as well, Ron," Harry said. "Do you think you'll be able to do so, Hermione?"

She doubted it, but consented anyway. They couldn't hang around here forever.

"Which horse do you want to ride, Ron's or mine?" Harry asked her.

"I don't care," Hermione said. She didn't want to reject either one of them.

Harry looked in doubt for a moment. "I'll… I'll just lift you on Ron's horse then. Is that fine with you Ron?" Ron nodded and got on his horse, this time facing the right way at once. Harry lifted Hermione up with his hands at her waist and Ron held her under her arms. After a lot of lugging and banging her leg painfully against the horses belly, Hermione sat in front of Ron. She was feeling very hot. Things were turning very intimate all of the sudden, no matter how much fun it was to have two men drudging around for her. She was glad when Harry had mounted his horse as well and they rode off again, this time with the horses under control. Hermione suddenly realised that apparently they _could_ get hurt inside this story and that took away all the warmth in her at once. They would have to be more careful, much more careful. She didn't want to think about what was waiting for them at the end of this muddy path. Well, no matter what would happen, she would at least be with Ron. And Harry.


	7. On their Way

** - Chapter 7 - **

Mr. Weasley's desk chair moaned when his owner let himself flop into it. Mr. Weasley wiped his hot forehead with the sleeve of his robes and took out a small pack in creased dark blue paper: his lunch. He folded the paper open and eagerly grabbed one of the thick white sandwiches. Ha, Molly had put Pumpkin Sandwich Spread on them, his favourite, he concluded contently as he took a large bite. What a morning, what a morning, he thought. As soon as he had entered the Ministry this morning, a colleague had grabbed him at the shoulder, and before he knew it, he was off again. Some lunatic had decided to bewitch the fruit department of a large Muggle supermarket. When Mr. Weasley had Apparated outside the store, the banana's were running past him, tackling Muggles they passed by… Inside the supermarket, strawberry's and apples had been bouncing around violently, knocking over shelves and hitting customers on the head as they went. Arthur had had to summon all of his department and they had been stunning fruit and casting Memory Charms all morning. And now… the paperwork. Mr. Weasley heaved a deep sigh and started on his second sandwich. Fat salty bacon with eggs. Molly was really trying to fatten him up lately. She was probably trying to feed up Harry and him at the same time. Oh, Harry, Mr. Weasley suddenly thought. He had forgotten all about all of that! Ashamed of himself, he rummaged through the pile of papers on his desk with haste, until he found the little notebook with feathers printed on it. He had promised Molly to look up the file on the magical book this morning at work, just to check whether everything really was all right. _Requesting the file on the book "The Princes of the House of Woldshire and the Dark Wizard"_, he scribbled across the paper. "_Arthur Weasley, __Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office__"_, he signed it and he tore the piece of paper of the notebook.

"To the archives," Mr. Weasley said, and the piece of paper folded itself two wings and flew out of the room, off to the archives. Well, that was settled. The file would come up to him later and everything would be fine. He just hoped that his twin sons were not teasing his youngest son and his guests too badly. Mr. Weasley took another bite of his sandwich and dipped his quill into the ink to start working on documenting the happenings of the morning with a deep sigh.

Meanwhile, Harry, Ron and Hermione were still riding through the forest, and dark looming castles were nowhere to be seen. Only a few sentences described their journey in the book and were spoken by George's voice, but in the minute in which that voice described their days of travelling, the three adventures really experienced that full days of journeying. Already their first day of riding seemed to last for ages. Hermione's leg hurt, as she would have expected, but the rest of her body was becoming sore too. She sat on the edge of the saddle and expected that that the imprint of that edge was hewn into her butt by now, and her back was hurting because she was leaning forward on to the horse's neck all the time: it would only make things complicated if she would lean against Ron now. Ron himself was leaning as far back in the saddle as he could and was starting to feel the strain as well. Yet he couldn't properly complain about hating horses to Harry, because Harry kept riding a few yards in front him, forcing Ron to ride harder than he felt comfortable with.

Harry's muscles were aching too, but he didn't really care. He was looking forward to some adventuring, he felt himself being pulled towards the danger and he had decided to give in to that feeling. He had this itching feeling for excitement more often. Usually he tried to suppress it, as it got him into trouble most of the time, but now he felt he could use some diversion. He had the feeling that looking behind him to the two dear fiancées wouldn't improve his mood. Harry softly put the heels of his boots in the sides of the horse and made it trot even faster.

The great pace led them through the forest quickly. When the sun started tickling the tops of the trees, they had covered a great distance and a small village came into view, with lovely crooked white houses with thatched roofs, as one would expect them in a fairytale. Ron and Hermione felt that this would be a good place to spend the night. Harry, however, kept riding on stoically without slowing down when they rode past the first houses.

"Harry," Hermione said, sounding worn out. "Harry," she repeated more loudly and then Harry's grey horse stopped and Harry looked at her over his shoulder. "Could we please stop?" she asked. "I'm very tired." Ron's horse walked on till it stood next to that of Harry and then started nibbling on some clover, which grew in between the orange stones of the road they were standing on. Harry didn't say anything, but got off his horse and grabbed the reins without looking at them.

"Guess that's a yes," Hermione said under her breath. Then she cramped when Ron put his hands under her arms to lift her off the horse without telling her first. Of course Ron recoiled immediately at this and then Hermione clumsily dismounted herself by holding on to the horse's neck and letting herself slide down (which was a lot easier when the beast was standing still) and she managed to land on her right foot. Ron jumped off the horse after her and grabbed the reins as sulkily as Harry had done. Hermione sighed as the two boys walked off all grumpy. She had to correct herself. It was not true that all men were pigs. They were pouting toddlers.

However, their first concern at the moment, was to find a place to spend the night. The village didn't look big enough to have a something like a hotel, Hermione thought. But Ron and Harry _were_ the rulers of all these people, or at least the future rulers, so surely they would have to be able to find a decent place to spend the night. Hermione saw something which looked like a pub to her left and decided that asking around there would be the best thing to do. She wanted to send Ron and Harry inside, not liking pubs very much herself, but when she called out their names, the boys seemed to consider it too much of an effort to even answer her and only managed a dull stare.

"Fine," Hermione said to herself. "Fine! I'll do it myself. There's more I can contribute to this quest than falling of my horse," she grumbled.

She swung open the dark wooden door and clammy air filled with smoke and smelling heavily of beer flew into her face. All of the male population seemed to have gathered here, even though it couldn't have been any later than five in the afternoon. Trying not to limp to badly, she started making her way to the bar. She felt eyes were looking at her but did the best she could at ignoring that. When she reached the bar, she leaned on the counter and addressed the girl that was wiping mugs with a rag, who seemed to be the only woman in the whole room.

"I'm looking for a place to stay the night," Hermione said to her, but the response came from someone else. A flabby looking man with beer trickling down his chin turned towards her and sprayed little drips of beer on her as he spoke.

"You can stay at my place," he said, sounding drunk and laughing in a way which Hermione did not like at all. The girl behind the counter giggled and swayed her blond hair behind her back. Hermione considered it unwise to respond the man directly and did it through the girl.

"It's for me and two others," she clarified. "Just for tonight, tomorrow-" Another drunk voice interrupted her, this time from behind.

"What's happened to you, missy?" a young man with fair hair asked her, Hermione saw as she looked over her shoulder. His friends at the table laughed. Trying not to look too thoroughly irritated, she turned to the girl again. However, the girl was looking at the man who had just spoken and treated him with a smile she probably considered to be seductive. Hermione sighed.

"Been doing wild things in the forest, have you?" the same man asked. This time Hermione couldn't control herself and turned around to answer him.

"What on earth are you talking about!" she snapped, but then she looked down on her skirt. It was torn on the left side, with blood stains, and the large brown coffee stain was still on it too. And she had laid in the mud face down… She tried to wipe her face with her hand, but the men only laughed.

"Listen, I'm here with two strong men and they can walk in any minute, and they're the Princes of the House of-" she started, trying to silence the men by impressing them with the titles Harry and Ron bore and perhaps a bit of bluff, but her voice drowned in the drunken noise.

"Two strong men, were they? That would explain it!" The men roared with laughter. Hermione was past feeling angry now and felt downright threatened, and she tried to get out of the room. She would arrange something else. Enthusiastically, the men started banging their mugs on the table and looked at her very amused. "Please, just-" she stammered as her way was blocked, but then a door at the back of the pub opened.

"Hey boys! Keep it down, will ya!" yelled the fat man in the door opening. "What's all this about?" he said and then he saw Hermione standing in the middle of the uproar. "Ah, leave the poor girl alone!" he said and he walked out to her. The men continued laughing for a bit and then started drinking again, though still a lot more boisterous than they had when Hermione had just entered.

"I'm sorry about that, my girl," the fat man said to her kindly. A large red moustache adorned his face. Hermione's shaking somewhat lessened. "Most of them have had a few drinks too many, but hey, I've got to make a living as well, don't I? I'm Tom, by the way. I own this place. Anything I can do to make it up to ya?" he asked her.

"Well," Hermione said, her voice still kind of wobbly, "there is. Me, and two of my friends, are looking for a bed for the night. And somewhere to keep our horses. Can you help us?" she asked him.

"We've got some spare beds," Tom said. "We have no stables, but your horses can spend the night in our garden, all right?"

"Yes," Hermione answered him, still feeling too much put of her balance to thank him as she should. "I'll go and get the others now." She went outside as fast as she could, dragging her left leg behind her. When she opened the wooden door, she saw Harry and Ron sit on either side of a rock, throwing little stones as hard against garden fences as they could, still sulking. They really didn't care… Hermione snorted angrily.

"We will sleep here. You can put the horses in the garden," she said curtly and she stomped back inside, or at least, attempted to with her right leg. The door of the pub closed behind her with a bang and for the first time that afternoon, Harry and Ron looked at each other. "Girls…" they both mouthed.


	8. Dreams and Nightmares

**_Author's note: Updated within a month! Quite neat, don't you think? And it has turned out to be quite a long chappie as well. Our friends travel from the more or less friendly forest to darker places, closer to the goal of their quest. And are they being watched? By the way, if you can read French, check out the French version of this story, translated by MysticScribe: Les Seigneurs de Woldshire et le Mage Noir._  
**

**- Chapter 8 - **

Hermione woke early the next morning. Her leg didn't prickle anymore, but there was a cold pain inside it which had climbed up as far as her thigh. The muscles were all stiff and didn't cooperate when Hermione tried to sit up. She dragged the leg to the side of the bed with her hands and placed her foot on the cold floor with tiles. The tickling woollen blanket slid off her leg and Hermione saw dark stains on the bandages, swimming in the sliver light that escaped through slits in the curtains which were hanging before the window across the room. The light fell on Harry's bed and illuminated the outlines of his face, his cheeks, the top of his nose. There were no glasses to reflect the light and Harry's eyes were closed, but yet it seemed as though he was still watching everything, carefully sensing whether any dangers were approaching. His eyelids were making little movements, small muscles squeezing and relaxing all the time, etching worried lines next to his eyes. Hermione now understood why there were always dark circles under his eyes. Sleep was no warm bath filled with bubbles smelling of flowers into which Harry could slide; it looked like a chilling pool in which he had to keep on treading water, if he didn't want to sink down and discover what was on the bottom. Hermione almost wanted to sit down on his bedside, take him on her lap and comfort him, shielding him from what was outside. But she knew she couldn't shield him from what was outside. And even less from what was gnawing on him on the inside. Harry looked more Harry now than she had ever seen him awake, and he looked more alone than she had ever seen him. He was so near, but Hermione knew that as soon as she would come near him, touch him with one fingertip, his eyelids would open, and instead of revealing what was inside Harry, cover it and hide it. Any anger that she might have had swarming in her head for Harry, froze, and fell down on her stomach as cold stones. Hermione couldn't stand the chilly wind running through her and looked at the bed beside Harry's. The silver light snowed on the fuzzy hills of blanket which were formed by the bones in the long body of Ron. A few pale toes stuck out from under the fabric on the back side of the bed, too big to fit into it. Ron's back was curled up and he lay with his head on one hand and his other arm lay pressed against his chest, ending in a hand laying next to his cheek. Like a child he lay, safe in the pale light and the warmth of his bed covers. His white skin enclosed visible muscles and moved up and down as he breathed. His slow inhaling and exhaling radiated warm waves which Hermione's body willingly absorbed. They made her skin tingle.

God, why was she studying those two sleeping boys, Hermione thought as she noticed her accelerated breath. She shook her head and threw the covers of her body. She hadn't taken off her dress the night before, so she wasn't very cold and didn't need to get dressed. Leaning on the wall, she got up and, as quietly as possible, she searched her way to the door along the wall. By using the cold iron door handle, she created a small opening, through which she arrived in a small hall without windows which led her outside. Damp, green grass tickled Hermione's bare feet when she walked down the garden. The silver light had mingled with golden light by now and hesitatingly, yellow streaks appeared on the edge of the dark blue sky. The two horses were tied to a large oak tree in the middle of the garden en they looked up at her as a greeting. Hermione's first urge was to turn her back on the beasts and return to the house, when the memory of what had happened the day before stung painfully in her body. Yet she forced herself forwards, closer to the animals. She couldn't stay afraid of them, because now she had to be one of those horse-riding-girls, whether she wanted to or not. She had quite enough to worry about when she was sitting on a horse with one of the boys apart from having to fear her mount. Shaking slightly, she laid her hand upon the blaze of the grey horse and slowly started stroking it when the horse didn't recoil or lunge out at her touch. Her lips curled into a small smile.

"See, you're not scary at all," she whispered at the horse and it stared back at her with its big brown eyes. Hermione laid her cheek against its long neck and combed its manes with her fingers. "I can handle you. You're a sweetie" she said softly, and clumsily she bent down to get a hand of grass for the horse. As she tried to tear off blades, leaning on her right leg with her elbow, two legs clad in dark, rather tight pants walked into view. Hermione looked up, at which half of her wild hair fell into her face. Through the wilderness of brown curls she looked into bright green eyes. They were opened, no longer drenched in emotions that made Hermione feel worried and powerless to help, and they looked at her. An amused smile was underneath it.

"Need a hand?" Harry grinned and he grabbed a handful of grass. He extended his hand and offered its contents to Hermione. "You've made up with the horses, I see?" he asked her.

Hermione smiled and took what was lying Harry's palm. They were both very aware of Hermione's fingers that brushed Harry's hand and they fell silent for a second. Hermione gave the grass to the horse and its moist lips nibbled the blades.

"I erm…" Hermione broke the silence, and she cleared her throat. "I wanted to wash my skirt and bandages for a bit. Just down at the river there." She nodded at far end of the garden, where the water of the river they had ridden past flowed as a small stream, embedded in wet grey stones which shone golden in the morning light.

"Yeah, I figured so when I heard you go outside so early," – so she _had_ awoken him, had he felt it when she had watched him? – "The bleeding hadn't quite stopped when we bandaged your leg yesterday, so the cloths probably need refreshing." Harry held out a white shirt. "There was still one left we can use," he said, "I had a look in the saddlebags."

Hermione nodded and she wiped the few remaining grass blades off her palm. Together they walked down to the river bank and dropped themselves on the stones (though Hermione with considerably more effort than Harry). Hermione grabbed a few handfuls of skirt and put them underwater. In the clear water around it, translucent wisps of red appeared and the dark stains on the fabric faded somewhat. Harry was looking at the bandage on Hermione's leg that could now be seen.

"Yeah it really does need changing," he said as he looked at the fabric which was soaked in blood and he reached out to her leg. "Shall I - …?"

"Yes," Hermione said and she positioned her limb so that it lay stretched across the stones. Harry the doctor started his work again and Hermione rubbed over stains in her dress with water, even though it didn't help all that much. Slowly, in the overall dusk, shadows started appearing as the sun came into view and worked its beams past the outlines of objects, as both of them were busy with their hands. Harry tore the shirt in slivers and bound it around Hermione's leg with much more speed than the day before and skilfully fastened it.

"Well, that should last for a while," he said pleased.

"Thanks," Hermione said and in appreciation she laid her hand on Harry's shoulder and smiled. A little flustered, Harry returned the smile. At least this awake Harry, she could reach.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione saw a figure standing underneath the great oak tree. She quickly removed her hand and turned her head. "Hi Ron!" she said, and Harry echoed her. Ron didn't answer, but just stood there and stared at them, reluctant to watch, but unable to look away. What he had just seen, had evoked an unpleasant feeling in his stomach and frozen both his eyes and tongue. The moment of silence was so rigid that even the horses next to Ron stopped their grazing and looked upon the situation with their shiny dark eyes. Harry felt uncomfortable. Why did he feel he owed Ron some sort of explanation? Hermione wished that she would do something like laying her hand on Ron's shoulder, showing that things were all right, as she had done with Harry, but just thinking of that froze her muscles and made her fingertips tingle.

Even though Harry didn't know why it did and didn't want it to be, his voice sounded apologetic as he told Ron that he had just been helping Hermione with changing her bandages. Ron looked down and muttered something Harry and Hermione couldn't discern. Hermione tried to meet Ron's gaze, but failed. An uneasy silence lay upon them, until the sound of an opening door interrupted it. The fat owner of the house came outside.

"Good morning, ye early birds," Tom greeted them with a large smile which curled up his red moustache. "Leavin' early, are ye?" The awkward moment was ended and all three looked into Tom's direction.

Hermione straightened her skirt and got up the best she could. "Yes, we've still got quite a way to go," she answered him.

"Well, the weather's fine," Tom said pleased, looking at the sky and squinting his eyes because of the sunlight which was falling into them. "Where are you headed?"

"We're going to the castle of…" Harry started and then cast a questioning look at Hermione. "Earpwald," she completed him. Tom stared at them, the ends of his moustache not pointing upwards anymore. "The wizard," she clarified.

"Yes, the wizard…" Tom said darkly. "What business have you with him?" he asked, sounding almost accusatory.

"Our sister is being held captive in his castle," Harry answered him. "Ethel, she's called." Tom taxed him with his eyes. "So it is a rescue mission of the royal house," he said. Then his intent gaze ended and he shook his head. "Rescue mission or not, if you want to stay alive I'd stay far from that place. Normal people can't fight what is in there. _He_… he has beasts unlike any you know, eyes in places other than his own head…" Anxiously, Ron looked over his shoulder. "Not even your royal blood will be enough to save that girl. Go home and pray that he doesn't take this lady as well," Tom said, eyeing Hermione. Ron looked as though he was quite tempted to return, but Harry jumped in.

"Hermione – Lady Mildburh – is quite able to defend herself," he bit, more bitter than Ron and Hermione were used to. "And we will be able to rescue Ethel. We will not leave her to her fate." Harry had gotten up by now as well and was looking rather menacing. Why did he always have to get so passionate when the smell of people needing defending or rescuing tickled in his nose, Hermione thought. She wanted to go and sooth, but Tom had raised his hands in front of his large chest, as if in defence, and spoke:

"All right, all right – no offence meant – just wanted ter help. If you guys feel you must go, I won't stop ye," he said. "I just hope I will see the three of you again."

"You will," Hermione said, and she smiled at him. She did hope the adventure wouldn't last so long that they would have to spend another night here.

The expression of the barman softened. "I will get you something to eat," he said and he walked inside again.

Half an hour later, Tom had put three loaves of bread inside the saddlebags, accompanied by some beer, 'to keep them warm when the night would come'. He told how they would need to ride and that if they kept a steady pace, they would arrive at the castle late in the afternoon. He advised them a lot of things, ranging from which pubs they should avoid to the best ways to repel dark magic, like throwing salt over your left shoulder and wearing crosses on your chest, none of which they remembered. Above all, he wished them luck as he waved them off when they continued down the road, during which Hermione kept expressing her gratitude for all his help, until Tom probably couldn't hear her anymore.

Today she sat on a horse with Harry. She had just mounted one and let the boys decide who would join her. After some standing around, shuffling feet and muttering for some time, Harry had mounted behind her. Hermione had decided she wasn't going to do the whole sitting-on-the-painful-edge-of-the-saddle-thing again and simply leaned against him. So besides her leg, she actually had a quite comfortable day. She looked around the scenery as the horses trotted over the muddy path, studied the farmers they passed by and wondered at the golden beaked birds that sat in trees they passed and flew through the sky.

Occasionally, they landed at crossings they didn't remember Tom telling about and had to ask lumpish men with rustic accents in what direction the castle was. Usually, all they got was a suspicious look and a grunt when the name of Earpwald was mentioned, after which the men turned their backs on them. So, the first junctions, they chose a direction at random. Soon, Hermione found that the farmers tended to be more cooperative when she draped her skirt so that a little bit of her right leg showed and put on a frightened look when she told them that she was terribly lost. Still, every one of them tried to send her home before they would eventually give her directions. Hermione thought she heard the voices of the boys murmur things which strangely resembled words like 'sluttish' behind her, but considered it wiser to ignore that.

"I thought you were with us to show us the way, not to flirt with every peasant around here," Harry teased her.

"Well, at least _someone_'s managing to find our way. Can't say you remember what Tom told us," Hermione said.

"Yeah, well, he did say a lot," Ron said. "Anyway, I _do_ still remember the amount of beer he put in these saddlebags." He tapped the leather bags.

"Let's save that till after we've finished business with the wizard," Hermione said. "Judging by all these people here, he's not a pleasant fellow. I wonder what he's got in store for us when we get to this castle of his."

"The fat guy, Tom, I mean, said that the wizard has all kinds of weird animals. Do you reckon that's true?" Ron asked, with a nervy note in his voice.

"We saw one of them," Harry said, "at the castle. The tiger-horse thing which he rode. Wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of that beast." Hermione felt Harry's muscles tense slightly behind her.

"We really should watch out," Hermione said. "I mean, just look at my leg,"

"Surely you won't fall off one of those beasts" Ron said, sniggering.

"No, because it would bite off my legs before I would ever be able to mount it! We need to be careful," she said, her voice quivering.

Protectively, Harry laid a hand on her shoulder. "We'll be careful," he reassured her. "And we'll be fine anyway. I mean, nothing too bad can happen, because if we would die or something, it would drastically change the storyline. Not that your leg isn't bad –" he added quickly when Hermione made an incensed noise when he spoke about 'nothing too bad', "it's just… not crucial. It will heal soon enough and mean nothing for the storyline."

"Maybe I'm not crucial at all and _can_ have nasty accidents just like that?" Hermione said. "It didn't even matter whether I would join you guys or not!"

"Of course you are crucial, you're Ron's fiancée, remember?" Harry grinned. "You'll have a nice lovely wedding at the end of the story, no doubt."

"Well, then you can be our bridesmaid," Ron said, trying to work the moment of fear out with jesting. "What colour shall we choose for his dress, Hermione? Purple with pink flowers?"

"Nah, it would clash with his green eyes," Hermione said, looking over her shoulder to Harry's face. "A pale blue with golden accents perhaps," she joked and the three of them laughed.

So they rode on, chatting and laughing, for what was left of the afternoon. They left the forest and passed through a town with cuddly houses with crooked chimneys of red bricks. The hoofs of the horses ticked on the stony roads and people watched them as they past, this royal procession, though small it was. Old women looked up from their needlework and girls adopted elegant postures for the passing princes with their impressive armour and adorned horses. As they proceeded, the houses turned less likable and fallen into disrepair, with loose stones lying around the front garden instead of flowers. The sun was going down and slowly darkness crept into the town. Further down the road, the amount of houses grew less until there were none left and the road itself returned to being a muddy path. More and more big grey rocks were lying next to it and instead of grass, the ground was covered in low cover, such as it grows high on mountains. The soft sound of waves breaking on rocks could be heard from afar and a cold, saline wind rubbed their skins. They were tempted to call it a day and camp, but the gloomy environment told them that the couldn't be far of their destination. And indeed, after a few miles, the menacing silhouette of a gate with large spikes on it came into view. When they approached it, they saw the raw cast iron of which the gate had been made, just like the fence connected to it, which reached as far as they could see. Behind the fence, the landscape looked more or less the same as before, with some dark hardy looking shrubs and trees strewn across it. Harry jumped off the horse and took the reins in one hand and tried to open the gate with his other. The cold iron creaked when he shook it, but didn't allow him to enter.

"Damn it," Harry swore. "Hold this for me, will you," he said as he gave the reins to Ron and placed both his hands on the metal bars. He pulled them violently, but it didn't help.

"How are we supposed to get in?" Harry said irritated. He studied the fence more closely, to see whether there was any hint on how it might open, but it just consisted out of the bars which ended in very sharp looking spikes. On top of one spike was a red bird, its golden legs folded around it, which studied them with its dark gleaming eyes.

"How are we supposed to be the heroic princes of the House of Woldshire beating this wizard if we can't even get to his castle!" Harry exclaimed. At this, a soft, metal-like sounding click resounded from within the gate. Harry grabbed the iron once more, and this time the gate willingly opened. The bird flew off in the direction in which they were headed.

"Right, a fence which understands what I'm saying…" Harry said and he shrugged, and opened the gate so far that the horses would be able to pass. Hermione looked at the red dot which flew away from her with distrust.

Then they heard George's voice speak again, as though no more than seconds had passed since he had spoken of their journey to this place.

"_The gate provided the adventurers entrance to the dark realm of Earpwald. Not yet could they see the secrets which it harboured in its hidden corners, which they would soon encounter_" George read aloud. "So, that's another chapter, guys," he said. "Rather ominous, this foreshadowing, don't you think?"

"No time to check it out whether it will live up to its promises now, however. I'm afraid we'll really need to go to work now," his twin brother said. "Otherwise we'll be busy all afternoon wiping the slobber off our shop-window, of our eager clients which are dying to enter the shop and buy our ingenious products."

"We'll make a nice cosy reading corner behind the counter, so that the three of you won't have to wait all afternoon. Isn't that terribly nice of us, Fred?"

"Very altruistic indeed, brother. Eternal gratefulness will surround us when these three get out of this book," George said. "But now we have to go. Bye guys!" he said and the cover slammed shut on the pages again and the landscape surrounding Harry, Ron and Hermione now felt even more dead than it had done before.


	9. Soaked in Fear

_Author's note:_ The story is getting darker. As you might deduce from the title of this chapter :-P, there's quite some action in it. Harry, Ron and Hermione are tested and every one of them has a different way of dealing with that. The English is kinda unsound in places, so if anyone is too thoroughly annoyed, corrections are welcome ;-).

_Chapter nine_

**Soaked in fear**

When the book was opened again, a lot of noise resounded on its pages. Harry, Ron and Hermione heard children's voices make excited, greedy noises and frightened gasps (probably at encounters with the Nose Biting Bird Nests). Coins clinked eagerly in purses and Fred and George's till even more so. It was clear how they could afford to wear dragon leather.

"Two Slimy Snowballs. That would be six Knuts," they heard George say and after that the noise of something very sticky passing over the counter.

"You guys do make a very good excuse for not having to deal with those brats. Erm – our dear_ customers_ – I mean. Obviously." Fred said and he cleared his throat.

"We've still got quite a way to go, we're hardly halfway through the book," he said, thumbing through the remaining pages and heaving a dramatic sigh.

"You know, you should have been in my place, with your theatrical qualities," Ron said mockingly.

"And I would have looked flashing in those tights," Fred finished him. "Alas, it was not meant to be. Though when you're back I might just-"

"Yes – right – Fred. Now read please," Hermione interrupted him.

Fred put even more artistic effort into his next sigh, but after that did comply.

* * *

At Fred's command the three of them continued farther away from the gate. First they rode the horses, but after a while the beasts became reluctant and Harry, Ron and Hermione had to dismount and guide them by softly pulling their reins whilst walking. Hermione looked over her shoulder cautiously.

"This is no good sign boys. Animals sense danger more accurately than humans and these horses don't seem to like where we're going," she said.

"You don't need to be a horse for that," Ron said, looking at what lay before them. "What's coming next doesn't look very tempting, with all those rocks and large trees and dark corners…"

The overgrowth around them was indeed becoming more dense. Increasingly larger trees created pools of even blacker darkness at their feet. Yards away, large rocks leaned against each other in different groups. In an odd way they made Harry feel like there were standing some sort of unpleasant… houses there.

"But the horses are probably just tired, I mean, they've had a long day. But so have we. They'll have to continue just like us and – ugh!" Ron's boot stuck to the ground in a way boots only do when they thread into – "Poo! Geez, now they start crapping in protest!" Ron exclaimed and he stopped to try and wipe the warm consistency off his leather footwear onto a rock.

"I don't think the horse just –" Hermione started, wanting to comment on the fact that the poo there couldn't belong to the horses, but she was interrupted by a metallic cling. Harry had unsheathed his sword and was peering into the darkness with big alert eyes. He held the sword in front of him with his right hand and it wobbled dangerously because it was really too heavy for him. With his other hand he reached behind him, trying to group the others behind him. Ron looked away from his boot and over his shoulder, confused. "Harry, what –"

"I saw something moving there!" Harry said wildly and he pointed the end of his sword in the direction a group of trees. They were now standing at the edge of the clearing with the groups of large rocks in it. The trees breathed extreme silence when all three of them looked at it. It almost felt too silent…

Then, on the other side of them a loud thump was heard as something landed on its feet after a jump. Hermione screamed and Ron gasped and all three jerked around. The horses neighed frantically and tore themselves loose and galloped off. A large creature faced Ron, Harry and Hermione, in fact, it seemed to be the creature which they had seen back at the castle. Its tiger stripes melted in with the darkness of the night and the moon mirrored in its large horsy-looking eyes, which had a deadly glare in them. Clumsily, Ron unsheathed his weapon, at first the end fell down to the ground, and grabbing it in two hands (which didn't look as though it was the way in which it was supposed to be used) he moved it in the direction of the beast. His chest moved up and down so rapidly and intensely it could be seen even with all that armour on.

The beast didn't even gratify Ron's attempt at intimidation with a growl and hardly seemed to be planning on retreating. Instead, it lifted its right paw and lunged out at Ron with its large claws. Hermione screamed again and Ron staggered backwards and sheltered behind his left arm. The sharp nails scratched across his arm and made a ticking noise on the metal armour, but the arm itself was unharmed. Yet even before Ron could regain himself a hissing noise on their other side required their immediate attention. The thing that had hissed was no tiger-horse, or anything like it: it had long birdlike legs and the plump body on top of those was covered in white and grey feathers. The neck was long as you would expect on an ostrich, but the skin was reptilian and the green scales reached up to the head of the beast, that of a snake.

The beast hissed even more violently now that they were looking at it and Harry swung his sword in the direction of the long neck. The neck twisted itself so as to miss the blade and brought the snake head to Harry's neck. Harry ducked and instead of in his neck, the fangs sank into a piece of the leather that showed from underneath his plate mail. Harry jerked his upper body and a plaintive mix of hissing and shrill birdlike whistling resounded through the cold night air: part of the fangs had broken off and remained embedded in the brown leather when the snakehead recoiled. With some more very hateful noises, the creature retreated into a group of trees. Harry fingered the piece of leather with the fang in it with a look of stunned disbelief in his eyes. "Did you see, it just…" he said, still in wonder.

"Harry! Will you _please_ pay attention!" Hermione pleaded and she grabbed Harry at the shoulder and turned him around. Ron seemed to be immersed in a lethal staring competition with those horse eyes. The sword held by Ron's shaky hands dangled in between him and the beast. A determined frown reappeared in Harry's forehead and he stepped forward with his weapon in front of him. The eyes of the creature flashed in his direction and out of its beak came a terrible roar, that seemed to make the very ground vibrate. It lashed out suddenly and Harry, Ron and Hermione were forced backwards. But behind them, no safety could be found either!

At least five creatures must have been coming towards them. They were more deformed than anything the three of them had ever laid eyes on, uglier than any gnome, because these beings seemed to have been glued together of animals that had been cut to pieces. Like Frankensteins, each and every one of them consisted out of at least two different animals. In the way the creature growling at them was a fusion of a horse and a tiger and the one with the fangs a mixture of an ostrich and a snake, the beasts hurrying towards them were bizarre combinations of hippo's and lions, giraffes and crocodiles, cows and hyena's, cats and spiders, elephants and wild boars… Some combinations might even have looked – comical – if it hadn't been for how painfully unnatural they looked. The spider-cat was totally out of proportion, it almost collapsed on the spot because it's thin legs could hardly support the hairy cat belly, which dragged over the ground as the legs tapped the ground with great speed. The spider face looked terrifying with its eight rolling cat eyes.

Hermione, Ron and Harry saw the band of distorted silhouettes coming their way, a menacing black shape with protruding long necks and broad legs. The mix of meowing, growling, mooing and sounds they couldn't properly distinguish was terrible.

"Oh my God…" Hermione whispered hoarsely. "God!" She didn't even have a weapon… She couldn't stay here, shouldn't stay here, standing in the way of Harry and Ron. Stumbling, she backed away, along the side of the clearing. She saw the figures of the boys drag around the heavy swords, trying to swing in the direction of the animals. The beasts kept getting closer to them, showing their teeth menacingly, biting in the air as if they were slashing their teeth into the flesh of the boys already. Ron and Harry were standing back to back, the creatures encircling them…

Hermione tried to run, but her leg was stinging with pain and preventing her from going any faster than at a dragging trot. Almost hopping, she continued along the grassy ground with rocks strewn across it. Faster, she needed to go faster, out of sight, out of reach of those beasts… Biting on her lip because of the pain, she increased her pace and her intakes of breath became even more sharp and frequent. If she could just get behind such a group of rocks… The boys would sort it out, Harry always sorted things out… Just a few more yards now…

Finally she could lean on one of the big grey rocks. Behind her she could hear so much metallic rattling that Harry and Ron both still had to be standing… Hermione hopped towards what seemed like an opening amongst the rocks leaning against each other. It almost looked like a little house… Straw creaked under her feet. It would be a good place, invisible, it was pitch black in there.

And then that blackness was pierced by two orange eyes. And then a beak. Hermione started backing away again, only this time in the direction from whence she had come. The eyes move farther towards her and slowly, moonlight revealed more and more of a bird's body, a very large body of an eagle which was walking on its yellow forelegs. But after that, partially hidden behind feathery wings, the back part of a horse could be seen.

"You're a Hippogriff!" Hermione said and her mouth almost fell open with surprise. She knew how to handle these. Quickly she sank through her knees in a deep bow, anxiously keeping her eyes fixed on those of the Hippogriff. It had an unreadable look in its eyes. Hermione bowed her back even further. "Please, please," she muttered under her breath.

The Hippogriff clicked its beak and then bowed its head. Hermione heaved a sigh of relieve and stood up straight again. She laid her hand on the grey feathers and the beast clicked its beak again, sounding appreciative.

"Can I ride you?" Hermione whispered. "I'm going to ride you," she said decisively. She put the experience with mounting horses she had gained in the previous days to good use and flung her leg over the Hippogriff. She coiled her arms around its neck and softly urged the creature forward with her right leg. It started with a little gallop and then flapped its wings and took off…

Meanwhile, things weren't getting any better for the boys. The swords were getting more cooperative with this practice they were getting, but Ron and Harry's arms were going numb with the weight of the weapons. The beasts barely had as much as a scratch, and the scratches only made them more aggressive and dangerous.

Then the horse-tiger reared up, which made it tower high above Ron and provided him with a frightening view of its striped stomach. Its paws kicked in the air. Ron shrunk and orange filled all of his sky and the orange was getting nearer en nearer… He could do nothing but extend his sword, pointing it upwards. The metal first stroked the fur, then gripped at a certain point and punctured the skin. The blade sank into the creatures chest and the beast uttered a sound which was a painful mixture of roaring and neighing, violent at first, but then more hoarse, until it died down. The heavy body fell upon Ron, who fell backwards. Warm blood poured on his hand and after that all over him. Ron tried to push the creature off him and it rolled over on its side. The horse eyes no longer looked hateful, but just empty now. Blankly they stared into the night. The thing was dead. Ron scrambled to his feet and shaking heavily with his whole body, he extracted his sword from the creature. It made an unpleasant juicy noise. Ron swallowed.

For a moment, Harry looked over his shoulder with almost a smile on his face when he saw the creature on the ground with Ron standing next to it. 'Well done, well done!' his eyes seemed to be screaming. He turned around again and Ron joined his side. When Ron swayed with his weapon dripping with blood, the animals in front of him recoiled. For a moment it seemed that the battle was decided now that Ron had shown his power. Yet Harry then felt something tickling at his left leg and when he looked down he saw the furry spider. It was not as big as Aragog had been, but not much smaller than Harry's leg either. And it was about to bite him…

But then Harry and Ron saw something coming in the corner of their eyes. It was not on the ground, but in the air and something with bushy brown hair was on top of it…

"Hermione!" Harry screamed. "Hermione!" He shook his leg and kicked at the spider.

The Hippogriff made a rough landing and the beasts in its way scattered.

"Get on here!" Hermione yelled. "Quickly!" She gestured wildly in front of her.

"Harry, you ride it! You're best at it!"

Harry and Ron complied and settled themselves in front of Hermione. Harry sat in front and dug both of his heels in the Hippogriff's flanks. The wings swung up and down powerfully and in a matter of seconds they had lifted off the ground. The beasts on the ground growled and some jumped, trying to bite the Hippogriff's legs, but they were out of reach.

Soon the cold wind whistled in Harry, Ron's and Hermione's ears and they were safely on their way. Greenish landscape with darker green and greyish blotches slid past underneath them as in a dream. Only now did all three of them dare to breathe normally again and look at each other.

"Ron! You're covered in blood!" Hermione said as she looked at Ron, shocked. She laid her fingers on Ron's arm and warm blood dripped from her fingers. "Ron?" she asked worried, when Ron said nothing.

Harry looked over his shoulder with a large grin on his face. "He killed the thing which took Ethel! It's dead!" he said triumphantly.

"Wow! Ron!" Hermione embraced him from behind. "That's so brave!"

But not even this could get a warm reaction from Ron. He stared in a direction away from them with his eyes very wide open. His face looked almost white and his expression was blank, except from his mouth, which was hanging open slightly, in shocked disbelief.

"I… I killed something…" he whispered. "It - it just fell on my sword, and then – it – I – I killed something!" he said, disgust resounding in his voice. "How can I have –"

"It's all right Ron," Hermione shushed. "It's all right. It was a very brave thing to do," she said, and she tightened her arms around him.

"The sword – it went right into the flesh. And the blood…" Ron said, almost inaudible. The blood he was soaked in felt thoroughly revolting. It's slightly metallic, saline smell was sickening and Ron felt himself retch. "I…"

"Sssshh," Hermione said. "It's all right," she said once more. Ron's mouth still repeated the words it had just said, but without sound. In silence they flew on through the night, headed for the moon., which cast a pale light over all their worried faces.


	10. Fluttering Leaves in the Wind

_**Author's note:** This chapter is a little experiment. I've been toying around with translating lately and I wrote this chapter in Dutch first and after that translated it to English. Boy, my vocabulary in English turns out to be very limited :P. After translating, I had to make some serious changes to make things sound logical. Weird, how different Dutch and English works. Anyway, I hope this eventually turned into something readable (next chapter I will start in English right away again, I'm way too lazy for this :P)(and I hope I didn't leave in too much ik's and en's, the Dutch words for 'I' and 'and' kept slipping through). Hope you enjoy reading it! As always, I'm interested in knowing what you think, so don't hesitate to review if you're feeling like it.**  
**_

_** - Chapter ten - **_

**Fluttering leaves in the wind  
**

In a steady rhythm the wings of the Hippogriff beat away the night air on its sides, hitting the legs of Harry, Ron and Hermione. The air which had felt pleasantly refreshing at first, now seemed to rub over their skins like sandpaper with its coldness. Their limbs were starting to feel stiff and a cool pain was creeping into them. Hermione loosened her grip around Ron's waist and after that even laid her hands on her lap. She shook her upper arms in attempt to loosen and warm them up a bit and intertwined her fingers with each other. Ron looked down when Hermione's arms left his waist. His red hair fell aside and Hermione saw his white neck glow in the darkness. Did he feel sorry about her arms no longer being there? Despite the cold wind, Hermione felt warmth creeping up her neck.

Ron could still feel the imprint of Hermione's arms on his sides, her hands on his chest. He thought of the dark scales of blood which would now cling to the golden fabric of her dress and the red streaks which would be painted across her wrists. The ink stains he so often saw on her skin just next to the hems of the sleeves of her dark Hogwarts robes, when she carefully scratched her quill across long pieces of parchment, swam before his eyes. The light frown in her forehead when she wrote down an answer to a question in long regular loops with great concentration… And now she was sitting behind him. So close. Not in a chair opposite to him in the Gryffindor common room, not walking through Hogwarts halls with him, not even sitting next to him having breakfast in the Burrow. Right behind him…

His thoughts were interrupted by severe shaking of his body. He felt ill, as if he was going to be sick. Images of ripped open orange fur and empty eyes flew past before his eyes, followed by images of small wrists with golden sleeves, a Harry which grinned proudly over his shoulder, blood on metal armour… Repulsion and attraction, pride and fear, alternated so quickly that all that remained was a light feeling in Ron's head. He clasped his legs tighter around the Hippogriff, afraid that the landscape around him might go adrift like the things in his head and that he would fall down, yards and yards through the sky, until he would fall down on that toylike landscape underneath him, with its tiny groups of trees and stones.  
Meanwhile, sunrays softly started tickling the Hippogriff and its riders. Above a large dark blot on the landscape before them, some forest perhaps, the sun hesitatingly showed a piece of its orange-red rim. It felt good to Harry to fly towards the sun. The memory of the beasts in the night weighed heavily on him and the sun would push away those thoughts with its light.

Harry was very proud of Ron, that had to be said. He'd finished the huge beast, he'd lain under its monstrous body in a large pool of blood. When they were back to back, surrounded by wild beasts, Harry had heard the roaring yell and then the dull thud. When he had looked across his shoulder, the cumbersome body of the beast was just rolling over on its side, pushed by Ron's bloody hands. Harry felt something like shame, that he had been surprised by Ron's triumph, but quickly a large proud grin had pushed away that feeling. Ron now had his own story in which he did not play the supporting role, but the leading part. It was no pleasant story, though. Harry felt the way he had when he had peeked into the living room through a slit of the door, when Dudley had secretly been watching a horror movie with his friends there. A man with a deformed face flashed across the screen with a bloody knife in his hands, a screaming woman was running through a deserted street… Back then, Harry had never been to Hogwarts and had never heard of anything worse that car crashes. He had run back to his broom cupboard en closed the door firmly, and pulled his blanket over his head and pressed his ear hard against his pillow.

Now that they were flying so high above the ground and the sun was colouring the landscape pink and orange, for a moment it seemed like Harry could once again hide underneath his blanket and shut out the things which feared him. He closed his eyes en enjoyed the soft warmth on his cheeks and the wind which pulled his hairs and the flapping pieces of his clothes. For a moment, he pretended they didn't have to get off the Hippogriff anytime soon and that they could safely remain above the horror story below.

All too soon the moment was gone. The wings of the Hippogriff stopped their steady stokes and started fluttering irregularly. Harry opened his eyes and dug his heels in the chest of the Hippogriff to get it to fly properly again. The Hippogriff shook its head in an irritated way, but didn't resume it's fast flying.  
"Come on…" Harry muttered and he tightened his grip on the neck of the Hippogriff. He tried to steer the shaking head in the right direction again and pushed his feet even harder into the sides of the Hippogriff. The beast made an angry sound and refused to fly any further. It seemed to rear up in the air, as though it was burning itself on an invisible wall in front of them. More urging on caused anxious squeaking. The wings flapped wildly. At irregular intervals, Harry, Ron and Hermione soared up a bit and then fell down a few yards, as though they were in some fairground attraction.

They were at the same level as a roof of foliage, a big green globe which was spread out far before them, then they sank down further, past more leaves, lower, more leaves, farther down, past huge branches, even lower, pas stems as broad as trains. At the bottom of the trunks the hoofs and legs of the Hippogriff hit the ground. It reared up wildly and threw Harry, Ron and Hermione of its back. They fell on top of each other and when the bird legs of the Hippogriff were on the ground again, it shook its feathers as though they had messed them up, like a dog with a wet fur, and after a quick fearful glance in the direction of the trees, it galloped off in the direction from whence they came. With her chin on the ground, Hermione saw the paws running off, past trees, over stones, until they jumped out of view. Hermione groaned.

"So far for mount number four…" she sighed. She pushed herself up on her hands in order to sit. She rubbed her scratched elbow.  
"They don't seem to like me."

Next to her, Ron and Harry got on their feet. Harry extended his hand and pulled Hermione up.

"One might start thinking so." Harry grinned. "Why did the beast act so weird all of the sudden?"

"It didn't seem to want to go any further," Hermione said. "As if it was scared."

"Scared of what?" Ron asked.

All three of them turned their head in the direction where they were headed, in the direction of the sun. Only the sun could no longer be seen: all that was visible was a very thickly wooded forest. The enormous stems they had seen when they descended and the green leaves which grew on them seemed to form a massive wall in front of them, which reached very high. Oddly, there was an opening amongst all the wood right in front of them, a gate of two partially intertwined stems. De gate provided them with an entrance to a tunnel which existed out of entangled branches. The ground was covered with shiny green leaves, with a colour as intense as you only see it on plants which appear first after winter. Somehow golden beams of sunlight penetrated the tunnel and made an enchanting mixture of green and gold dance before Harry, Ron's en Hermione's eyes. 'Come in', the forest seem call out to them. Their feet were tickling, longing for the feeling of juicy leaves under their soles.

Hermione felt her foot step towards the gate, how the glistening path beckoned her en pulled her towards it. Harry fluttered his eyelids and shook his head to get the emerald sparkling out of it. He clasped fingers around Hermione's arm to stop her from going through the gate. As if he had disturbed her while she was in deep thought, she stared vacantly at Harry over her shoulder. Then she shook her head too and the normal Hermione returned in her eyes.

"That path, it's…-" she said slowly.

"I don't think we should take that path," Harry said decisively. "Ron", Harry shook his shoulder and Ron too came to his senses again, "we're going to find another road."

"Huh?" Ron said, but Ron had already started walking and Ron and Hermione followed him. They walked next to the green wall for some time, but it seemed to be more or less the same everywhere. It didn't curve, so there was no way to start walking in the direction of the sun again. Harry started walking faster and faster. Hermione had to resort to some sort of hopping leaping.

"Harry…"

He looked over his shoulder, as if he only just remember having Ron and Hermione tagging along, and stopped.

"I don't think we can get around this forest," Hermione said to him, slightly out of breath. Harry placed his hands at his sides and looked from the far left to the far right across the border of the forest. Nothing but what they had already seen for many yards could be seen. Hermione placed all her weight on her healthy leg as she waited for Harry. Harry sighed and looked at Ron and Hermione again.

"I guess you're right," he said. In the short silence that followed, he tried to think of what they could do. However, the silence was broken by a cracking and rustling noise behind them. It sounded as though boughs were breaking and leaves were snowing down. When Harry turned around to look, the saw a tunnel which looked almost exactly like the one they had seen before. Was that a flicker of a shadow at the end of the path?

"I don't think the story leaves us a choice," Hermione said, and after a short hesitation of her body, she stepped through the wooden gate, unto the green strewn path. The boys followed her. The scent of freshly mowed grass on a Sunday morning, but a hundred times as intense, streamed into their nostrils. The air seemed to be made of liquid gold and seemed to surge as air does when the weather is hot. It was indeed warm in the tunnel, it seemed like a secluded space from the chilly landscape outside. The leaves rustled high in the treetops and under their feet, and they made an enchanting music none of them had ever heard.

When Ron looked down, he saw flashes of red amongst all the green. He brushed some leaves aside with his right foot and more red became visible, mixed with yellow, blue and darker colours in an intricate pattern.

"A Persian rug?" Ron said to himself with light astonishment. The others walked some feet away from him and didn't hear him. Ron rubbed over the red with his boot and felt fabric. Yes, it was indeed a rug. Ron shook his head in confusion. This didn't make sense.

In fact, this whole path didn't make any sense at all. He looked over his shoulder, trying to decide whether to continue, but didn't see anything other than green and gold behind him and decided to join Harry and Hermione again. This road at least took them closer to their destination. After some steady pacing, he had already reached the others again.

After some time, it was hard to say how much, for they seemed cut off from things such as time and the outside world, the end of the golden path came into view. A grassy green blotch grew bigger and bigger as they approached it: they were nearing a clearing. The dazing scents started to be diluted by fresh air. They got out of the tunnel and a beaming blue sky greeted them.

In the middle of the clearing lay a large heap of very fluffy cushions in bright colours. Amidst all the green, yellow and blue were the pink creases of a large skirt. A girl who was something like thirteen years old sat on a pile of red cushions, with a posture so upright and proud that she looked like a queen. She resembled a doll, her skin like white porcelain and her hair strewn across her slender shoulders in long dark ringlets. She had a small turned-up nose, cheeks so pronounced it seemed exaggerated and her narrow pinks lips were curled into an amused smirk.

She giggled softly. "Welcome my Princes."


	11. The Sweetest en Stickiest Strawberry

_**Author's note:** With exams going on, fanfic suddenly seemed to appeal me more strongly than ever :-P. So in between English, Math and Physics (well, it _was_ practicing English, one might say ;-) ), I wrote the first part of this chapter. Chapter ten introduced a new mysterious person, and she turns out to be quite relevant to Harry, Ron and Hermione in this chapter. Quite a pain in the ass, too, they might call her :-). After the previous chapters filled with action and thoughts and descriptions, now there is room for dialogue. And Fred and George felt kinda left out in the last chapters, so they get to make an appearance as well :-). Hope you enjoy it! Don't hesitate to tell me what you think, any comment is very welcome!**  
**_

_**- Chapter eleven -**_

**The Sweetest and Stickiest Strawberry**

"You _are_ princes, right?" she said and she laughed, one of her slender hands covering her mouth. She planted her elbow on her knee and leaned forward in a confidential way, as if she knew them well.

"You're…", she stretched the vowel teasingly and fixed her eyes upon Ron. "Leofwine," she said excitedly. "Right?" she added eagerly and her eyes flashed from Ron to Harry and back, trying to see whether she had guessed right.

Ron looked rather overwhelmed for a moment and then realised he was being asked something. "Erm… yes," he said.

"I knew it!" the girl said triumphantly. "Crown princes are always the tallest." She giggled in a way which made Hermione tut and cross her arms over her chest irritably.

"Then you're Wigmær," the girl continued without taking any notice of Hermione, and she pointed a pink fingernail at Harry. She looked at him from head to foot with eyes that looked as though they were laughing. Then she sat up again and rolled her shoulders back, so that she sat extremely upright. She tilted her head forward slightly without taking her eyes of the boys and breathed in as if she was going to say something very exciting and important.

"_I_ am Ærest," she said pompously with a lot of emphasis on the first word, and a proud smile bulged her porcelain cheeks. She seemed to be waiting for them to gasp in wonder, or at least say something, but all she got was silent stares. The smile faded and turned into a pout. She sighed very loudly. Her eyes turned from the boys onto Hermione.

"Who are you, anyway?" she asked in a bored tone, gazing at Hermione from under her eyelashes. Hermione looked almost incensed at the way this girl was treating her. She spoke in a vexed voice.

"I'm Lady Mildburh," she said. "Leofwine's _fiancée_," she added with emphasis. Ærest seemed utterly unimpressed and sighed again. She turned to straightening creases in her big pink skirt, as if that was by far more interesting.

"_Honestly_," Hermione muttered to herself. The girl didn't look up. Then Hermione thought of something.

"Wait a minute, how did you know who they were?" she said, inclining her head towards Ron and Harry. The girl stopped fuddling with her dress instantly and got that look in her eyes which she had had when she had been about to introduce herself. She giggled and seemed to be enjoying the fact that everyone was waiting for her to speak tremendously. Then her high voice sounded again.

"A few days ago, a girl with long red hair passed through here. _The princess_, Fultumiend told me."

"Fultumiend?" Hermione asked. Ærest cast an irritated look at the source of this interruption, but did answer.

"The ugly servant with the bent back," she said with some disdain. "Surely you saw him at your castle? He _was _there, wasn't he?" she asked eagerly. "They wouldn't tell me everything," Ærest said, and she looked as though someone had denied her a sweet.

"But they _did_ tell me that you would be coming in a few days. And here you are." She laughed her sweetish laugh again.

"They told you we would be coming?" Harry said. He looked at Ron and Hermione in confusion and then with some angry despair. "They knew we would come! We've been set up, they'll be waiting for us!" He walked towards Ærest with menacing steps, stopping only a few foot before her, clenching his fists. He looked tempted to grab the girl at the shoulder, but it seemed wrong to threaten to do anything to something which looked so fragile.

"What are they planning to do to us?" Harry asked angrily. "Tell us, now!"

"Now, now," the girl shushed, as if she were talking to a three-year-old. "No need to get all worked up about it." She did not appear to feel threatened by Harry at all and had only lazily leaned her head against a yellow cushion on her left when he had approached her. Now her mouth smiled a smile which was more patronizing than the motherly she was probably aiming for.

"You go and sit down. We'll have some tea. Frick!" her high voice rang loudly over the clearing. Harry was breathing in and out indignantly and he could not even think of something to say. His mouth hung open. This girl didn't take him seriously, no, even ignored every word he was saying!

From Harry's left, a servant scuffled towards them. His pace was weird, for his left leg could only be half as long as the right which he limped after him. In fact, the whole four-foot body of this being seemed like the way in which a toddler unable to control his colouring pencil would draw the body of a gnome, crooked, with weird bulges and without an uninterrupted curve anywhere. If Harry had found the beasts of the night before disfigured, it was nothing compared to this crumpled image of something human. The servant wore a dusty jacket which was way too big for him and not fit for his not-straight body. The left leg of his trousers was turned up in big creases, and the right one showed a piece of the potato-like-brown skin of the right leg. On a coarse right hand, rested a turquoise serving tray with a very large steaming teapot and cups and saucers, and sugar bowl and milk jug and what more on it. It was a miracle he managed to keep the thing balanced with the way he walked.

When he the tray came into view of Ærest, she let her head fall to the left, the side where the servant wasn't standing, and she managed the loudest and most irritated sigh Harry, Ron and Hermione had heard of her since they had met her.

"_No_…" she said as if the servant had just presented her with a pink gerbil instead of tea. "_The table_ Frick, we have visitors!" she said to grass on her left. Frick, as he was apparently called, hurried off again, almost tripping in his haste. A moment later he returned, dragging a curvy coffee table of shining wood after him. He scudded around the table, positioning it so that it stood exactly straight before Ærest. After that, he laid down three fluffy cushions for the guests to sit on in quick succession. He limped his fastest away from them and then returned with the turquoise tray and in a flash, four damping cups of hot water stood waiting for the four of them.

"Strawberry," Ærest commanded. Frick reappeared with a small pink box in his hands and conjured golden tea balls out of it, one for each cup. He gave Ærest four spoonfuls of sugar. The fluid inside the cups slowly turned into a brownish red. Frick gestured Harry, Ron and Hermione to sit down, his deformed arms waving in the direction of the cushions. A little overwhelmed, the three of them allowed themselves to be escorted to a cushion, and before they knew it, they were all sitting with a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in their hands, sweet fruity fumes steaming in their faces. Frick provided them all with an iced biscuit and then hurried out of view.

Ærest sipped her tea, her little finger proudly in the air as she held the cup. "Now, that's better," she said contently. "Come on, drink," she told her guests, who were sitting on their cushions rather dazed. Then Harry blinked his eyes as he had when he had been looking at that tunnel and realised the total ridiculousness of the situation. His eyes which had been wide as he was overwhelmed at first, now became smaller as an angry frown surrounded them and their green burned vividly. Harry put down his cup on his saucer with force and tea slopped over the edge of the porcelain rim.

"No, we won't drink your tea! For god's sake, why are you talking to us as if we're hardly five years old! If _anyone_ here is to be told what to do, it's you!" Harry stood up (more tea splashed out of his cup as he collided with the table) and laid his hand on the sheath of his sword menacingly.

"_What do you know?_"

The girl tutted softly to herself and irritation carved a fine line across her smooth forehead.

"I _told_ you, they wouldn't tell me everything. They were just taking this girl – your sister – to the castle and they told me it was the princess, which I could see, _obviously_, as if I can't recognize royal blood, and then they said I would have some more royal visitors in a few days. That's all," Ærest said irritably. "And there's no need to be so impolite!" she added. "This is _my_ forest, not yours!"

"_Your_ forest?" Hermione asked incredulously.

"Yes, _my_ forest," Ærest answered, all irritation suddenly gone, and once again she let the 'my' roll over her tongue as if it were a hundred times sweeter than the icing on the biscuit on her saucer. A boasting smile was on her lips. "Daddy gave it to me," she said proudly. She glanced over at Ron and Harry to see what kind of reaction this evoked.

"'_Daddy'_!" This time there was even more disbelieve in Hermione's voice. "You are not seriously saying that this Earpwald is your father?"

Her smile almost stretched out to her small ears, she nodded. "I take care of it for him. Everyone who comes to see him, comes past me first."

"Lovely, a secretary," Hermione muttered. "But then who's your mother?" she asked.

The smile faded from Ærest's face at once and she looked down. For the first time, someone seemed to have managed to affect her. The high voice did not sound quite as self-satisfied as it had before when she used it again.

"She – she's…" Ærest started feebly. "Daddy got rid of her," she said after a small pause. An uneasy silence hung above the wooden table. Ærest's little nose twitched slightly, as if she was going to cry, but no tears ran over the round cheeks. Then she looked up again and the corners of her mouth were forced upwards again. "Daddy's loves me most. He didn't need mommy," she said. The smile turned a little more vile. "She was only a girl from the village. Not a wizard like daddy. She couldn't do magic like _us_." Ærest huffed.

"Why would daddy need her when he's got me?" she said scornfully. Yet, Hermione thought there was a note of uncertainty in her voice, as if Ærest was convincing herself rather then her guests.

"Then why did he put you here?" Ron asked bluntly and Ærest looked as though he had slapped her in the face, but kept her neck and head straight this time, and only the painful way in which little muscles around her eyes squinted betrayed her. With her eyes cast down and her fingers strained around her cup she spoke again, sounding much older than she had at first.

"He… First it was just the two of us. And he made me pets," a little true smile briefly crossed her lips, "a lot of pets. Pets no one has. But… he started making them bigger. And scarier. I didn't like them anymore. They made me feel frightened." Ærest couldn't suppress a slight shudder before she continued.

"Then he put them away in the garden, far from the castle, near the gates. I thought everything would be all right again. I never came there anyway. I still don't. But then…" Ærest's face was slightly screwed up, an uncomfortable V in her forehead, as if she remembered the taste of something very bitter.

"He… he wanted to make me brothers. Not with mum, and not with another woman, but all by himself. He used me… did all kinds of magic… I didn't understand it…" Her eyes were filled with an empty stare, as if she was looking at something inside her head rather then outside of it. Whatever she saw, looked as if it were unpleasant and confusing. There was a silence. Then Ærest huffed.

"He didn't manage. He couldn't make them." Her voice was growing steady again, a vile touch to it. "They were no proper humans. They were stupid. And ugly." She laughed.

"Ugly! Like Frick! Ugly, stupid, stupid, ugly Frick!". Her unpleasant tone echoed all over the clearing. The scolding seemed to comfort her greatly. The weakness she had just shown, was concealed behind a nasty smirk again.

"Not like me. I'm pretty. And I'm not stupid. I'm pretty," Ærest said to herself once again, as if this feature shielded her from everything bad.

"So Earpwald _made_ Frick?"

"Yes. And he made others. But he couldn't get them right. Not like me. He should just have kept me. Just the two of us. He always wants to have everything. He shouldn't." Ærest looked away to her side. _Look who's talking_, Ron thought.

"He was angry. Angry when it didn't work out. He didn't want to see them anymore, Frick and the others. He made them do jobs around the castle, so they weren't inside, and out of sight. But he didn't get better. Whenever he saw me… he – he remembered. He got angry with me, as if it was my fault. It wasn't my fault." The last sentence, she spoke to herself very silently. "He sent me to the forest…"

"So now I live here. With Frick. And my visitors." She chased the uncertainty away with a large smile, which revealed her little pearl like teeth. Her mood made a sudden swing to boisterous cheerfulness. "I don't have that many visitors, you know. We're going to have a lot of fun! We will have more strawberry tea… and blueberry, and raspberry! We will play games, and… and – we will dance! Yes, we will dance! Frick! Come! Play us some music!" Ærest shifted around eagerly in her seat.

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at this sudden almost maniacal behaviour with great distrust. Large frowns adorned their foreheads and Hermione and Ron exchanged a non-comprehending questioning look. There was something seriously wrong with this girl, apart from being ridiculously spoiled. An explosive mix of her father and something sickly sweet and wanting. And the idea of meeting that father soon had hardly become anymore tempting. _He_ had created all those deformed beings? The beasts, the servant? What more would they encounter on their way to the castle? This man seemed to want to control more things than humans should want to control.

"Well… - I think we'd rather go. Yes, we must be going now," Harry said and he was starting to prepare leaving, shoving his cup away from him and about to get up from his cushion. It was best if they left this place soon. It only brought disturbing things.

"Oh no," Ærest interrupted him. "You're staying. We're going to dance." She looked at him in a very excited way. "And first you must finish your tea," she added.

"Some other time maybe," Harry heard himself lie. "We're leaving."

"No," Ærest said.

"_Yes_," Harry replied. "Come on guys," he muttered to Ron and Hermione.

"_No_," Ærest repeated sternly. "You will not," she said simply. "You can't!" And as she laughed, they heard the sound of breaking, creaking, growing branches, not unlike the sound of the tunnel, but a hundred times louder. Before their eyes, the forest surrounding them grew thick, so thick, that the clearing seemed to be bordered by brown-green concrete walls. There was no way of passing through those.

"I _told_ you this was _my_ forest. And _I_ can do magic too, just like dad. So you will stay!" Her laughing seemed to bounce at them from all directions, and didn't seem to have anything to do with happiness anymore. It was threatening and enclosed them as smothering as the trees surrounding them.

"Frick will not roll out the carpet until I tell him to. And that's your only way out. The trees don't give way to anything else. Do they Frick?" she said teasingly and she looked over her right shoulder. Frick was standing with a wooden cither in his hands and an empty look in his eyes, as if direct orders were all he could process. Next to him lay a very large roll of decorated red carpet. Persian carpet. "They don't," Ærest whispered to them in an amused tone. "Unless it's under my influence of course. Obviously better than any carpet, however nice this one is."

"But that's what lay in the tunnel!" Ron said. He remembered the red flashes amongst all the green leaves. "Are you saying this Frickguy put it there? And that he just got it out of there again by making that large red roll, so we can't get out of this place!"

"Yes," said Ærest, sounding extremely pleased with herself. "It does make a lovely entrance, my carpet, don't you agree? Well, anyway, as long I will it, the forest won't let you out and you'll stay. Now, drink your tea."

"Wow, that little lady's got you under her thumb," George said to Ron and then he turned to his twin brother. "Why don't give our bro a little break in which he can drink his cup of _Sensual Strawberry _and help out in the shop, Fred? The Pursuing Parrots are going like mad! Ah, but of course, you three are of unfortunate ignorance, even you, dear Hermy, you don't even know what _Pursuing Parrots_ are! Let us enlighten you and inform you of our newest product! Say, you want to know where your baby brother is wondering off to-"

"Not that we need worry about that now, as he's been safely on my lap ever since lunch," interjected Fred.

"And Ron has never been that cunning in hiding his tracks anyway," said George in support.

"as we have frequently used to our advantage."

"Remember that time we secretly followed him down to the village,"

"and saw him going to that girl, trying to-"

"and then we –"

"All right, all right! That's enough! Shut up!" Ron said, looking as hot and red as his cup of strawberry tea, and steaming even harder.

"How rude," George said. "I'm sure Harry and_ Hermione_ would have loved to hear about –"

"Let us stop here, George, or I'm afraid our brother might actually start to boil and evaporate," interrupted Fred, eyeing the illustration in the book. "And it would a tad sad if the story had to go without it's crown prince."

"Ah well, some other time," sighed George. "I'm sure we'll be able to de the tale more justice with its main subject and our listeners in real form anyway."

"So, to return to the more important things in life: the Parrots," said Fred.

"Yes, the Parrots," George resumed. "You throw them after the person you want to be able to track, which they will the follow. They go with a compass –"

"- made of very fine oak wood –"

"and they show the direction in which the parrot is, and the distance between the compass and the parrot. Of course accurate down to tenths of inches."

"It's very popular with boys from who that certain girl just _keeps_ escaping,"

"Because there's no way she'll get away with one of our Parrots tailing her," sniggered George.

"That's rather vile, you know," said Hermione.

"But it _does_ work, and our customers know that," said Fred.

"Which is why they are all swarming in front of me wishing nothing more than to put their gleaming Galleons in our till at this very moment. Why not help them achieve their goal in life and lay down the book for a sec and join me at the counter? Which will give Ron some time to figure out what to say to this girl in the book next – I thought I heard something rather beautiful evolve between those two…"

"George, I think the girl's twelve years old," Fred said.

George bit on his lip. "There you have a point, maybe she's too far beyond Ron on the intellectual level…"

In the middle of a mocking "Hm…" of both Fred and George, the book was closed once more, and Ærest's world froze.


End file.
